four poems
by Gülen Çelik
Poppy
Green plateaus of refuge inside me I never visited.
Warm and charismatic tourists working at their soul’s arranged mandates.
The noise feels like sweat sliding down my back.
When they drip whoever follows me into the night is a bruise.
He tugs his shirt once, maybe for help, maybe for air.
It’s the astonishing will of spring then summer that opens you like a ripe mistake,
soft and aching, revealing all the seeds, sedative.
Laying bare minimum.
But here even the clouds resist their sacred stillness.
He has to get going.
And I have to border the city like a thin vase.
One flower ago, hopeful.
My Rules
God forbid I suck on a solipsistic lollipop like a brat.
Or become a serial thinker or writer.
God forbid I forget about others.
God forbid I mistake unhappiness for a ticket to justice.
God forbid the modern merchants selling images of glamorous tradition.
God forbid the human iris envies the sun.
God forbid I’m in the assembly line of my entrapping thoughts hoping to walk away by maintaining the given principles.
God forbid I’m a golden child using dead currency to balance the cosmic scale.
God forbid Rumpelstiltskin gets the children first.
Are You Gone, Now?
Her death will be a gymnastics’ cartwheel spree, forever bend.
No applause, no hands to catch, no ground to touch.
Suspended by the waist, forever blowing in dead air.
A flute master’s favorite hole.
Dandelion.
Her curly strand, an eclipse to the eye.
The deliberate eros.
Sweaty mishaps.
Cheery tongue rolling a rose.
Edgless, soundless star she is up the desultory desert
Axe stuck in air.
A safety net of wrists and hands, holding herself up to recoil.
Menthol she breaks
A soft machine operation
Cough! Cough!
The evocations are threads spilling forth the reader’s mouth
She is gone with you now
Hold your spit for a big gulp
Full Body Stretch
Tendons unfurl in silence.
Palms read like scripture.
Volumes of fate.
Travertines.
A soft tissue disaster.
The roof of your throat.
The tip of my youth and tongue.
Functional and elegant.
That’s what we are!
A silent tempest of tension and release.
Pranayama here and there.
Tasting the ending line of our light.
Thank you for making me,
for taking my chest to the dead end,
whispering warmly to my nape,
holding me accountable all along.
Photo fo Gülen Çelik
BIO: Gülen Çelik is an Istanbul-born writer. Her work appears in Hobart Pulp, Animal Blood, Spectra Poets, and Soft Union.
Find her on instagram @angelicfairy