from my unpublished second collection
Too tired to read, I fall asleep in my chair with the heater on.
Two crows pick through the season’s last harvest.
A neighbor’s wind chimes, muddled by strange dreams. Tangled in sheets, tossed pillows.
Then up again before the alarm, when sleep was once as simple as breathing, as checks coming in, going out.
If you can’t make it in Chicago, says my uncle, you can’t make it anywhere.
I raise my glass to the best economy since the end of the Second World War.
How could I fail?
How can I, who has done everything that is required, face you with empty hands?
First published in The Canary
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images and text © by Alpay Ulku
