Joseph Salvatore Aversano


See-Through Land Sea Walls

The sketched wavelets in miniatures are fish's scales.
Or scallops. You just have to look real close.

And yet the columnist Procopius writes, “You know that
this city has grown too big when a twelve-year-old

born and raised in it has never seen the sea, never seen
its garland of waters." As our cabby asks us how

to get back to the Asian continent, the Theotokos hums
"While Going to Uskudar". And the child she is

holding is lulled. As they go by caique through the
splashed up scalloped paint . . . the splashed

               up scalloped paint . . .



Stylites in the Wind

When the lodos wind whips through the people grow irritable.
Lovers get into spats, and something feels sort of off.

The ferry decks fill with cigarette smoke all the way out to the islands.
And we end up having to stay inside the pub. Where it’s safe.

And because of the bombs in the square. A monk ascends a column
and announces he will stay up there in penitence.

And the people come in droves just to see him. How the weight
and scent of a Haji Shakir soap block assures me.

My barber is the son of a barber who calls himself “White Beard”.
And did you know? It took me about a month to realize

that the nearest mosque is in my own building. And as Orhan Veli
was listening with his eyes closed, he couldn’t help but notice

the lodos as well. The reed flute player we meet says the instrument itself
is his teacher. And I confess, I sometimes long for the wheezing 

jingle of the Aygaz truck. For it to make its way up past
the washing. And on into the rapture, or air.




Joseph Salvatore Aversano currently lives with his wife Asu in Ankara on the Central Anatolian 
Plateau. His poetry has been published in numerous journals including bones, Die Leere Mitte, 
E-ratio, is/let, and Verse-Virtual.
 
 

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