Home - a sketch

By Ekin Kurtdarcan

 

Home is not

the most beautiful place on earth.

 

it's where fishermen collect words from the sea,

and your future lies in a murky puddle,

casked by a porcelain tomb.

 

it's where you wear your prayer

like a brand of shame, as your mother

gives the shadows down the street

the evil eye.

 

the tea brews wistfully in its metal casket,

and men sweating under the burden

of a dome, lower their heads

in silent obedience.

 

My grandmother watched the news

where they shot a shaman

who, in pursuit of a poem

hid in the house of the Virgin.

 

a gypsy stood on the edge of Ida

to grab Spring by her skirt — Beauty

is only worth the people

who nurture it.

 

Home

is where the drizzle punches bullet holes

 

and the crops explode through the soil

for the harvest of sorrow.

 

Didim, 2016

 

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Born and raised in Ankara, Ekin is currently a student of Comparative Literature at King’s College London. With a background in classical piano, she is constantly looking for ways to incorporate music into her writing. She writes essays, reviews on visual arts, short stories and poetry, and has an unhealthy obsession with opera, travelling, cultural studies and postcolonial literary theory.

 

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