ALEXANDRA IN ISTANBUL

Carl Boon

New to the city,
she spends afternoons
rehearsing the shapes of clouds.

One day, they’ll reappear
in a notebook
with names of friends

she’ll have forgotten.
She swears the city
won’t swallow her, leave her

paralyzed, strangers
unconcerned if she’s the will
to get up, go home. I was

Alexandra, and walked
through Taksim Square
in the rain in November.

They sold me poison sandwiches,
seats for movies
that never played.

I am waiting to go home.
But the tangerines this fall
on Ergenekon Street

have just begun to sweeten,
and the bonito for sale
on the Bostanci sea-road

glisten in the morning.
Alexandra will put these away
for later, images of a lost world

when the calm of Gdansk
grinds her and the Long Market
on the Baltic becomes shadow.

-photo from creative commons zero

WE STRANGERS

Carl Boon

We know, we strangers, we
who stand on the platform
whispering stories
to each other.

Her mother’s breast aches—
in the morning, especially.
Perhaps it’s how she sleeps,
or the fall breeze,

the crack where the window
won’t close. But we’ve foreseen
the issue already, the tender
flesh spidery and weak.

Or the man whose wife
disappears most Wednesdays,
the breakfast plates
in the sink, her best pants

specially creased. She’s not
going for the sale on sheets
at the English Home Boutique.
She’s desiring another latte

with the man with nice hair.
These people speak to us
with glances, as we listen
for our trains and wait.

-photo Harry Rajchgot