Reconstruction
Splinters and cracks surround us,
axes and larger implements.
On my walk this morning
I saw a family’s kitchen exposed
to the coming rain. I saw a sofa
where just last December
a mother fed her newborn
as the first snow of the season
fell across Istanbul. The truth
is economics: they must tear down
to make new, money, long cars
for everyone involved.
But in so doing other truths
emerge: that was a bedroom
where newlyweds made love,
that was a dining room
where 13-month-old Merve
discovered what it meant to walk.
The new, they say, will withstand
an earthquake. The new
will have a garden, a roaming
cocker spaniel, grandparents
happy with their cups of tea.
This is how the pictures persuade us
to forget the old. Our memories
will be better there. Now I hear
the familiar, distant saw. Two men
carry a stack of windows
up my street. Others perfect
a kitchen where nothing’s been cooked.
My Fourth Grade Crush
Heather Haley had no i-Pad
to guide her through evenings
of long division.
She had her hands
that never touched my hair,
her blue eyes that looked
away during recess.
I was unlucky. I was never
the one to whom notes
were passed (flowery, blue),
never the one to be looked upon.
There were charismatic
others, firm in their bullish
phrases, adroit with distance.
They were the lucky
as I stood aside,
wondering about Reagan
and the Russians,
my grandma’s potato soup,
my baseball cards. I guess
I was a weird boy,
a weird man, contemplating
commas and why
July can’t last forever.
It’s hot where I am,
and Heather Haley’s cool
in a kitchen in the suburbs.
© Carl Boon
Carl Boon lives and works in Izmir, Turkey. His poems appear in dozens of magazines, most recently Two Thirds North, Jet Fuel Review, Blast Furnace, and Sunset Liminal.
The Loch Raven Review 