Walking Istanbul
By Julene Tripp Weaver
This city between my legs, rises up
into my hips
jagged spurs pierce my heart
Careful
City of WATCH OUT
Each step a danger zone
Each sidewalk a wave to navigate
Cobblestones in a jumble
such sharp-drops
This city deep in my body
on alert
The next foot step my sudden death
This city seven hills
breathing monster to surf
The waves windy over the Golden Horn
each bridge on high alert
back-to-back traffic
On Friday nothing closes
in this riot of a city
You might meet a protest
rows of Polis cars ready on Istiklal
people push on
tired energized
too wired to stop
Until prayer time
five times a day such
resonance magnified
holy echoes five times a day
stir the internal call
to a nearby Mosque
songs that
bring you inside
to your own holy place
to the only quiet
This city
a cradle on the edge
of a windy cliff a lullaby
in a storm far from peace
every rock precarious for a tumble
The dogs in the street fight the cats
growl at them from under cars
hunger in their eyes people hand them food
but slim to feed the empty numerous
bellies
of so much wild
The young ones the artists
grow up like the dogs
on these streets
Outcasts with little compensation
the old women with their children beg
it is a place
one must fend for oneself
*
Julene Tripp Weaver is a psychotherapist and writer in Seattle, WA; she worked in AIDS services for over 21 years. Her three poetry books are: truth be bold—Serenading Life & Death in the Age of AIDS, (Finishing Line Press, 2017), No Father Can Save Her (Plain View Press, 2011), and a chapbook, Case Walking: An AIDS Case Manager Wails Her Blues (Finishing Line Press, 2007). She is widely published in journals and anthologies. Her poems can be found online at: Anti-Heroin Chic, Riverbabble, River & South Review, The Seattle Review of Books, HIV Here & Now, Writing in a Woman's Voice, and a creative nonfiction piece is published by Yellow Chair Press, In The Words of Women International 2016 Anthology. You can find more of her writing at www.julenetrippweaver.com.