No More Games, and: Landscape of a Bloody Mouth in Pomak

Abstract

Reviewed by: No More Games, and: Landscape of a Bloody Mouth in Pomak Zuleyha Ozturk Lasky (bio) No More Games 1 No more green background,deck of cards splayed over the soil of the last Mediterraneansummer. No more kings, no queens, only I sometimes snuck throughand met my grandma despite her drunk ogre. We met in her roomsound-proofed by fabrics rolled, stacked to the ceiling.She gave me blank spools to use as legs for three-legged dolls.Dolls we dressed in pansies, screaming pansies, fabric leftfrom pants sewed for field workers drenched in sweat and stenchas they harvest tobacco in Soma, Turkey. The pansiesscreamed. We whispered in fear of corded phone threats. Roomstuffed in seams, colorful threads, girly dust. Grandma’s asthma.Particular lines of sewn thread she loved. Grandma lovedquiet needles punctured through [End Page 19] breasts of dolls we gave voicesto, their lungs stuffed in shredded fabric, together we learnedto soften walls and breathe. 2 While my grandma was youngand pregnant, her husband dined in Libya, clinking wine with Ghaddafi.Gambled heart rolled over a deck of cards. She dilated and burst on her own.After a shredding seven-year absence my grandpa returned. All my grandma didwas sew, sew snapdragon seeds, grow a garden of merlot, pink flamingo, shirazred dragon heads she let me decapitate. She let me pretend that I,I was the snapdragon—bite-bite. I bit as quiet as I couldin case he showed up. I wonder if my grandpa, the ogre,knew he was the ogre. I wonder if he knew his granddaughterwas a snapdragon. 3 Years later, as he reeked of Rakı,we still spoke of him. His yellowed [End Page 20] mustache, empty bottle, drunkenwords rising the first time he met me— You’re not my granddaughter!Get the fuck out! How could I ever be your granddaughter?How could you not know all along that you were my fat bellied ogre? Greenon green background, pansies growing through your eye sockets, your snapdragon’sroots elsewhere, and I cannot ask anyone where? Where your headstonestings. Where is your tarmacked accordion soil my daring ogre?Game we’ve been playing, stacking secret on secret hoping all cardsdwindled away asking who wins? 4 Who wins? Crushed hazelnut shells,Turkish carpets, my grandma’s slippers slipping away from my tiny feet,how the calm in the center of our game was her sewing room,an old Singer creaking with her foot on the pedal as she synchedher heartbeat to the rhythm of centimeter stitches on a flat seam.I am stitched into single pearls [End Page 21] of sweat swelling on her forehead,I am threaded through the burning eye of her sewing needle, I hear herfabric shears swimming through meters of fabric. There are no moregames, only the polka dotted cobalt village pants she sewed three sizestoo big, not knowing when again we will breathe in the same roomand sew together the last decade. [End Page 22] Landscape of a Bloody Mouth in Pomak Pomak, n. Originally: a descendant of a group of Bulgarians who converted to Islam from Orthodox Christianity in Ottoman times. Now: a member of an ethnic group professing Islam who speak a Slavonic dialect of Bulgarian and inhabit parts of Bulgaria, Macedonia, Turkey, and western Thrace. –Oxford English Dictionary There were booksbelow the Quran, booksabout beekeeping, Lenin & gremlinsbelonging to the menin the house. I checkedbetween my legs,was there anything else I housed?Quran lostin Bulgarian vaults, the other booksdog-eared & tossed.Many things I was allowed to do,I was the queenof cards tossed, I’d pee in a field, runbare-chested fromone race to the next. [End Page 23] I’d ride a tractor,its exhaust undressedand hot-tossed. At one point, I wasa man in boxers,collars, handkerchief I could lend to ladieswho always saidthanks. At one point I grew a beard, heldthe soot, pulledfor the root of “thanks.” What about the otherdog...