Joseph Salvatore Aversano

In the City of Seven Million Hills

Even back when the population of Istanbul was half of what it is today, it was not always so easy to find oneself alone in it.
 
Take for instance, the dream of our friends Firat and Emre. Ever since they had gone out and bought themselves rollerblades, they had been counting down the days to the one-day curfew of the Year 2000 National Census. That would be the day they’d skate unhindered the whole steep winding way down to Bebek’s bay. 

                   some of the sky
            tugged in on
 
      a kite
 strin
g

And there was the winter when I would sit reading in one corner of our windowed porch in Jihangir. And with Freely’s Istanbul: The Imperial City opened. But the Imperial City had by then shrunk to the size of the doorman’s vegetable plot below. In fact, the only thing in the infinite fog beyond the garden’s shut gate would be a foghorn’s sole blast. It being in and of itself an islet of sound. And I, as far as I was aware, was its only denizen.

after the last commuter    ferry the view

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About the Author

Joseph Salvatore Aversano, a native New Yorker, lives on the Central Anatolian Steppe with his wife, Asu. Some of his more recent poems have been published in Die Leere Mitte, NOON: journal of the short poem, and Otoliths. He is the founding curator of Half Day Moon Press and editor of its new journal.

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