[genredysphoria]

Mum: alıngan. Kendi ateşiyle kendini yok eden yumuşakça. Erimek üzere varsın, kaderine inanırsın Ölürken fark edilmez, ışığın solduğu zamansın.

Hiçbir aşk titremez sonsuza değin Bütünlüğünü yitirişinden ölür bir mum Ve insan acıdan ölür bir gün.

[A candle: tender. Softly consuming itself with its own flame. You believe in your fate, you’re about to melt, the time that light fades, dying unnoticed.

No love trembles forever. A candle dies of its lost entirety And some day man dies of pain.]

—birhan keskin, “cinayet kışı: iii [the winter of murder: iii]”

[genredysphoria]

The body continues, despite the dead; how close We do come, at times, to that slowness. As close

Our bodies oscillate, minutely, always. Such near Drops into that early deep set us off—disclose—

Foreign growing motions. We three had no idea What pull might be, what stone; it encloses.

Such spinning still encompasses more than three— In a warming wound all are doubled; a fist closes.

I remember the body continuing, despite the dead Close as choked inside. I remember what comes after this.

—trish salah, “ghazals in fugue: viii” from wanting in arabic (2002)

[genredysphoria]

I begin with love, hoping to end there. I don’t want to leave a messy corpse.

      I don’t want to leave a messy corpse       Full of medicines that turn in the sun.

Some of my medicines turn in the sun. Some of us don’t need hell to be good.

      Those who need least, need hell to be good.       What are the symptoms of your sickness?

Here is one symptom of my sickness: Men who love me are men who miss me.

      Men who leave me are men who miss me       In the dream where I am an island.

In the dream where I am an island, I grow green with hope.  I’d like to end there.

—jericho brown, “duplex (i begin with love)”

[genredysphoria]

                  But die soon, Love. If what you have for yourself, does not stretch to your body’s end.

—amiri baraka, from “balboa, the entertainer” (1962)

[genredysphoria]

AS A POSSIBLE LOVER

Practices silence, the way of wind bursting its early lull. Cold morning to night, we go so slowly, without thought to ourselves. (Enough to have thought tonight, nothing finishes it. What you are, will have no certainty, or end. That you will stay, where you are a human gentle wisp of life. Ah...)                      practices loneliness, as a virtue. A single specious need to keep what you have never really had.

—amiri baraka, “as a possible lover” (1962)

[genredysphoria]

saying again if you do not teach me I shall not learn saying again there is a last even of last times last times of begging last times of loving of knowing not knowing pretending a last even of last times of saying if you do not love me I shall not be loved if I do not love you I shall not love

—samuel beckett, “cascando”

[genredysphoria]

For some people a bird sings, feather shine. I just get this this.

—anne carson, “gnosticism i″, decreation (2005)

[genredysphoria]

hey delikanlı hey delikanlı sırtımda unuttun bıçağını ne kadar gitsen de uzağa kanımın izi kalacak avuçlarında

[hey crazy-blooded hey crazy-blooded in my back you forgot your knife no matter how far away you go the trace of my blood will stay on your palms]

—murathan mungan, “unutulmuş bıçaklar [forgotten knives]” in omayra (1993)

[genredysphoria]

kendini benim yerime koy oğul öksüzü babalar yerine Susuyorum. Ölülerim uyuyor kalbimde.

[put yourself in my place orphan boy in place of fathers I am growing quiet. My dead are sleeping in my heart.]

—murathan mungan, “bıçak [knife]” in omayra (1993)

[genredysphoria]

Elis, when the blackbird calls in the dark forest, this is your downfall. Your lips drink the cool of the blue rock spring.

Invoke, when your brow lightly bleeds, ancient legends and dark interpretations of bird flight.

You, though, go with soft paces in the night that hangs full of purple grapes and you wave arms more beautifully in blue.

A thornbush chimes where your mooning eyes are. O, how long Elis, are you dead?

Your body is a hyacinth a monk dips his wax finger into it. A black cave is our silence.

Sometimes a soft beast treads out of it and slowly sinks its heavy lids. Black dew beads on your temples.

The last gold of fallen stars.

—georg trakl, “to the boy elis” (1913) tr. christopher newton

[genredysphoria]

One of my favourite stories is about an old woman and her husband – a man mean as Mondays, who scared her with the violence of his temper and the shifting nature of his whims. She was only able to keep him satisfied with her unparalleled cooking, to which he was a complete captive. One day, he bought her a fat liver to cook for him, and she did, using herbs and broth. But the smell of her own artistry overtook her, and a few nibbles became a few bites, and soon the liver was gone. She had no money with which to purchase a second one, and she was terrified of her husband’s reaction should he discover that his meal was gone. So she crept to the church next door, where a woman had been recently laid to rest. She approached the shrouded figure, then cut into it with a pair of kitchen shears and stole the liver from her corpse.

That night, the woman’s husband dabbed his lips with a napkin and declared the meal the finest he’d ever eaten. When they went to sleep, the old woman heard the front door open, and a thin wail wafted through the rooms. Who has my liver? Whooooo has my liver?

The old woman could hear the voice coming closer and closer to the bedroom. There was a hush as the door swung open. The dead woman posed her query again.

The old woman flung the blanket off her husband.

– He has it! She declared triumphantly.

Then she saw the face of the dead woman, and recognized her own mouth and eyes. She looked down at her abdomen, remembering, now, how she carved into her own belly. Next to her, as the blood seeped into the very heart of the mattress, her husband slumbered on.

That may not be the version of the story you’re familiar with. But I assure you, it’s the one you need to know.

—carmen maria machado, from “the husband stitch” in granta 129: fate

[genredysphoria]

Puslu ve sarı bir Çin sabahı gibiyim bazen Sağım solum kış, şehir Üstüne ay mavisi düşmüş bazen uzak nehir Dünya bana göre bazen, bazı zehir.

[Sometimes I’m like a misty yellow Chinese morning Winter, the city all around me Sometimes the far-off river where the moon’s blue falls The world is for me, sometimes, some poison.]

—birhan keskin, “kesif su [dense water]” from ba (2005)

[genredysphoria]

I failed to avoid the South. Graceland, docksides, children gutting fish with a knife, the hint of another shame-bathed night, your hard hand on my mouth.

Think I won’t tell your wife you dipped me in wordlessness, the yard smarting with calla lilies?

Good luck shutting me up, you sorry mother of Achilles.

—natalie shapero, “heel” (2014)

[genredysphoria]

...When you die, I’ll point to the toxins blocking the constellations, say that’s you. You, who measure your lovers in milliHelens, the unit of female beauty required to launch only a single ship.

—natalie shapero, from “was this the face” (2014)

[genredysphoria]

Har içinde biten gonca güle minnet eylemem Arabiyi, Farisiyi bilmem, dile minnet eylemem Sırat-i müstakim üzre gözetirim rahimi Zalimin talim ettiği yola minnet eylemem.

[I won’t grovel for a rosebud in the heat I don’t know Arabic, don’t know Farsi, I won’t grovel for language I follow the straight path, eye on the God of Mercy I won’t grovel on a path laid out by tyrants]

—kul nesimi, “minnet eylemem” (ca. 1650)

[genredysphoria]

Because she carried the old world on her back across the ocean, in a boat, and she put it down on Grand Concourse Avenue, or in Flatbush, and she worked that earth into your bones, and you pass it to your children, this ancient, ancient culture and home.

—tony kushner, angels in america 1.1 (1991)

[genredysphoria]

We eat the year away. We eat the spring and the summer and the fall. We wait for something to grow and then we eat it.

—shirley jackson, we have always lived in the castle (1962)