“prayer beads and a well and cow dung and smoke and coal and flag plastered on a hill and olive trees and olive trees choiring and an olive seed smacked onto a plate by my grandmother and sheepish eye and a rug in the bedroom from Bulgaria and yogurt fermenting and ashtray with a stomach full of ash and cevşen read thrice and halo of television and plastic covered couches and kahvehane and kahve and Müslüm Baba hunkering hangimiz sevmedik? on taxi radio and Atatürk street and my uncle looping a rope around the awning as a swing for me and kittens and chickpeas and chickpeas dried and collected in a pile and chickpeas on fire”
Enjoy this audio recording of “Soma, Turkey” by Zuleyha Ozturk Lasky from Vol. 34:2 of CALYX Journal! Buy your copy here!
Zuleyha Ozturk Lasky is a poet living in Tallahassee, FL, and working toward an MFA in poetry at Florida State University. She is the co-founder of Leavings and an assistant poetry editor at Narrative Magazine. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in Adroit, Palette, Small Orange, Epiphany, Salamander, Cream City Review, Nimrod, and SWWIM.