Thrush Poetry Journal
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Michelle Bitting
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Fugue State #2

On the streets of Istanbul
I got lost,

alien and at home 
as humanly possible.

Minarets sang out
the wailing Call to Prayer,
a clockwork to race my pulse by.

Blue ships of plenty
docked Aegean-adjacent, 

barnacle chests bulging nets 
of silver mackerel  
as I walked past.
               
Then tea from an hourglass
at the shop Sah Sultan,
color of crushed pomegranate

and served on mirrored trays
by men I couldn’t understand.

Turkish Delight made of roses 
and emerald pistachios, 

the white pelt of powdered sugar 
melting as I chewed,

an aftertaste that followed me
through Mehmet’s Mosque 
and the Spice Bazaar.

I wanted to roll like a dog in cardamom.

For sapphire pendants
rimed in crystal ice
to wink evil at me everywhere.

Eyes that trailed this other I’d become:
Gemini Girl 
wearing the same clothes for days 

because that’s what drifters do,
stay rugged and travel light.

Lean into a pillar 
near the Hippodrome

and sniff where gladiators 
once cracked their whips,

the gravel worn down by wheels
and centuries of teeth 
to the park’s fine dust.

Where the dogs just lie around now
and dream
without fences or chains. 

Like pillows,
like sundials or compasses,

their sleeping paws stretched 
in a direction 
impossible to map,

where faces blur into one
and names no longer matter. 


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Michelle Bitting’s latest collection is The Couple Who Fell to Earth (C & R Press, 2016) which received a starred and Best of 2016 medal from Kirkus Reviews. She has poems forthcoming or published in The American Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Narrative, Vinyl, Plume, the Paris-American, Fjords,Thrush, Diode, and others. Poems have been featured on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily. Her book Good Friday Kiss won the DeNovo First Book Award and Notes to the Beloved (C & R Press) received a starred Kirkus Review as well. She has won the Beyond Baroque Foundation, Virginia Brendemuehl, and Glimmer Train poetry contests and been a finalist for the Poet's & Writer's Magazine California Exchange, the Rona Jaffe Foundation, the Julia Peterkin, among others. Poems have been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net prizes, and most recently, The Pablo Neruda Poetry Prize from Nimrod International. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Pacific University, Oregon and is completing a PhD in Mythological Studies at Pacifica Graduate Institute. For more info: C&R Press 

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