by Müesser Yeniay

Maharajah

Day was closed inside
like a faded
flower

my world would fit into
a camel’s hump

we were passing
through the mountains
as elaborately as a thread through
-a needle

my dream was an Indian Maharajah
when she slept and fell down
saddle

the caravan walked…

a thousand and one nights people went
after the earth

Dear Simona,

My heart is very heavy as if it is loaded with stones and left into the sea. Sometimes one or two stones are decreasing, when I am happy. Sometimes I say to myself that I am going to be crushed under my heart as if under a truck. My blood is flowing into the ink. Writing is a witness to me, though it doesn’t relieve me. Since I was born, the scratchy radio of my inside is on.

It seems as if no breath was blown into me
It seems as if I shrinked like a baloon
pierced

[people are talking with huge shadowy words]

I’d like to leave my body to a garderobe
like a second hand cloth

-maybe I am an enormous cloud of failure-

maybe I can find a remedy
if I wring my heart and cry like a laundry

Editor’s Note on Maharajah & Dear Simona:

Maharajah & Dear Simona is not Müesser Yeniay’s first work to appear in Eastlit. Her previous published pieces are:

• Vietnam appeared in Eastlit February 2016.