When the Sky Dresses Up in Gray
Kadıköy, Istanbul
A gray Saturday
There’s half a joint left over from the night before and some boredom still lingering from long ago, they walk into the room arm in arm and stand in front of me. In front of my thoughts, my ideals ... my desire to get out of bed and get myself together—emasculated ... As soon as I see the ashtray, as unemptied as my heart, I feel like smoking one more. This half joint a gift to the memory of what I’ve lost and to the presence of alienation. The sky is gray, a tropical climate prevailing in the geography of my face, a sanguinental climate in my soul. Summers dry and hot, winters lonely and bleeding. Thorny eye-ish plants grow all around me. And if some Roman bastards will tag along, I’ll declare myself the Messiah. A son left to his own devices by his father, while the holy spirit is left a paralytic …
The day of the week may be Winter. The season may be Saturday. God may be wearing his gray clouds today. Everywhere pitchblack, like the universe’s battery is dead. Faces pitchblack, hearts pitchblack.
Barbed wire in my head …
Let a hand put some pressure on my lungs and my breathing cuts out. With as much strength as I happen to have, I put these cuts back together and make new me’s.
On a Saturday that belongs to Winter, if the sky’s put on its gray clouds, my hands will seek a name in the phonebook—could be a dealer, could be a lover. Everything comes back to haunt me, everything I’ve laid waste to without meaning to. And I’m not even a Mongol …
End Level Boss:
Richard Bona - Dina Lam
translated by Donny Smith
Batuhan Dedde was born in Istanbul in 1987. He has published several books, including his collected poems Biz Ona Şiir Öğretmedik—Bu Ona Yakışmaz Da—36/69 (We Have Not Taught Him Poetry, Nor Is It Meet for Him (36:69)). His work updates the modernist poetry of Turkey with more open explorations of political and theological problems and much, much more raw emotion.
Donny Smith was born in Nebraska but teaches at a high school in Istanbul. Books he has translated include I Too Went to the Hunt of a Deer by Lâle Müldür, Pigeonwoman by Cemal Süreya (with A. Karakaya), and If Cutting Off the Head of the Gorgon by Wenceslao Maldonado.