Ayşe Tekşen lives in Ankara, Turkey where she works as a research assistant at the Department of Foreign Language Education, Middle East Technical University. Her work has been included in Gravel, After the Pause, The Write Launch, Uut Poetry, The Fiction Pool, What Rough Beast, Scarlet Leaf Review, Seshat, Neologism Poetry Journal, Anapest, Red Weather, Ohio Edit, SWWIM Every Day, The Paragon Journal, Arcturus, Constellations, the Same, The Mystic Blue Review, Jaffat El Aqlam, Brickplight, Willow, Fearsome Critters, Susan, The Broke Bohemian, The Remembered Arts Journal, Terror House Magazine, Shoe Music Press, Havik: Las Positas College Anthology, Deep Overstock, Lavender Review, Voice of Eve, The Courtship of Winds, Mojave Heart Review, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, Tipton Poetry Journal, Rigorous, Rabid Oak, and Headway Quarterly. Her work has also appeared or is forthcoming in Straylight, The Roadrunner Review, and Helen Literary Magazine.
When I Steal
When I steal, I steal big.
I steal the spring
And the birth of flowers.
I capture the giving,
A child’s crush—
Innocent and generous.
I secure the frames of nature
That travel through my flesh—
A hive for bees of steel.
Stealing is a sacrifice
For the nations apart, the pith
Uncrossed, lines untangled. Tangle,
Then untangle this sacred oracle.
Know your worth, the smell of your fear,
The gleam of my kiss on your neck.
I steal big and bravely
For your days
That do not know
Of the atonement
Of my many Mays,
The wait, the ebb
In the anatomy of buildings,
The delicate crossroads
On the fields of war. I bless
Most the loss of beauty—
My incipient babes
I hold dear in my bosom.
My times of yore are of physiques
Immature because of their anima.
The poles of ambience are even.