Müesser Yeniay

I Did Not Come into the World

MÜESSER YENİAY

            
Neither I had a mother
nor I was a mother
                        of a child

I did not come into the world

my lovers were husbands of others
I could not complete
                           a half

I leaned over words
so that they see the poverty
that melts

I could not find any human-being
everybody is gnawing on
                                    my pain

I decreased myself
I do not want to be more
                      than any reason

Maybe I Have Dropped

There, in that basket
remains that I walked

childhood
is the crust that you scattered within you

there are candies of earth
earth itself is a candy
it melts, your legs get wrapped around

to pass on all the ways
over all the roads
of childhood

a tree stands in its place with all its branches
but where is my childhood?

By the Voice of an Unborn Child

My eyes are closed
with my body that sucked
                        light of darkness
                        here I am sleeping
I do not know my body yet
                      which curls like a snake

a shadow within
a human within

memories of future are in my mind

somebody will come
                        and take me to the world
I suppose
                               to that neverworld
to that cosmic wound
                              to that green time
when words are shepherds
                             here every sleep is morning
no eyes
                      this trip which goes
inside
     a dream bell jar
here like a brooch attached to a women’s heart
    I am standing
—as if a woman left me I am sleeping—

                           my mind does not have thought
                                       nor my heart has feeling

walls of my room is my second skin
as I am here without father
                           I play with
                                       my toy-god

I am one of the people who are invited to the world

this womb cellar in which I stay
                                    like a pot
telling me what it is going to tell
                                    by its shadows

I have heard I have so much time to go to the world!

Step-World

There is nobody within night
this white wall to which I touch with my voice

                                    darkness is like a ball of string
                                    filling inside me

there is nobody within night
my body is dead which likes to revive

my light wrecked darkness
                           they call it world
        the things which
                     head for me without stop

I cared for the bees of silence
night and day
             my ears are walls that do not let
the world in

I wiped the glass of my heart
           in my body just it leaves stains

it was heart
                        whatever it showed was time!

I was naked here
               where light peels off
                                        my skin

this world where I came
                as if I wanted to be a child
                               of a women who never gave birth
                                                                     —is step

Sand

They carried my heart and left here all together
                                                               with its sand
the weather is so calm
                         that the birds of silence are rising

let no light but darkness be
        so that we can close the eyes that want to be open

did not the one who gave birth to us
also give birth to our pain?

                         —indeed which motherhood is holy?—

they left me here
                    looking at sand
                                       like a hill

if my skin had remained in my mother
I would never ask anything from her


MÜESSER YENİAY was born in İzmir, 1984; graduated from Ege University, with a degree in English Language and Literature. She got her M.A from Bilkent University on Turkish Literature. She has won several prizes in Turkey including Yunus Emre (2006), Homeros Attila İlhan (2007), Ali Riza Ertan (2009), Enver Gökçe (2013) poetry prizes. She was also nominated for Pushcart Prize 2016 by Muse Pie Press in USA.

Her first book Darkness Also Falls Ground was published in 2009 and her second book I Founded My Home in the Mountains is a collection of translation from world poetry. Her second book I Drew the Sky Again was published in 2011. She has translated the poems of Persian poet Behruz Kia under the name of Requiem to Tulips. She has translated Selected Poems of Gerard Augustin together with Eray Canberk, Başak Aydınalp, Metin Cengiz (2011). She has also translated Personal Anthology of Michel Cassir together with Eray Canberk and Metin Cengiz (2011). Lately, she has published Contemporary Spanish Anthology with Metin Cengiz and Jaime B. Rosa. She has also published a book on modern Turkish Avant-garde poetry The Other Consciousness: Surrealism and The Second New (2013). Her latest poetry book Before Me There Were Deserts was published in 2014 in İstanbul.

Her poems have appeared in the following magazines abroad: The Voices Project, The Bakery, Sentinel Poetry, Yellow Medicine Review, Shot Glass Journal, Poesy, Shampoo, Los Angeles Review of Books, Apalachee Review (USA&England); Kritya (India); Casa Della Poesia, Libere Luci (Italy); Poeticanet, Poiein (Greece); Revue Ayna, Souffle, L’oiseau de feu du Garlaban (France); Al Doha (Qatar); Tema (Croatia).

Her poems have been translated into English, French, Serbian, Arabic, Hebrew, Italian, Greek, Hindi, Spanish and Romanian. She participated in the poetry festivals like Sarajevo International Poetry Festival, September 2010 (Bosnia-Herzegovina); Nisan International Poetry Festival, May 2011 (Israel); Belgrad International Poetry Festival, September 2012 (Serbia); Voix Vives International Poetry Festival (Sete), July 2013 (France); Kritya International Poetry Festival, September 2013 (India), Galati/Antares International Poetry Festival, June 2014 (Romania), Medellin International Poetry Festival, July 2014 (Colombia).

Müesser is the editor of the literature magazine Şiirden (of Poetry). She is currently pursuing a Phd in Turkish literature at Bilkent University, Ankara, and is also a member of PEN and the Writers Syndicate of Turkey.