The street boys, lunging forward
in their fathers’ boots,
make noisy ados tonight in Tibriz.
The war that might’ve killed them
didn’t; the nation their uncles died for
in 1983 survives another night.
They want whiskey and internet pics
of Emily Ratajkowski in a red bikini;
they want Pokemon on the Avenue
of Martyrs and Wilson basketballs.
They sneak tobacco in their jeans
and cross the shadow of the mosque
where wildflowers break through
winter, purple and gold, like artifacts.
Carl Boon is the author of the full-length collection Places & Names: Poems (The Nasiona Press, 2019). He received his Ph.D. in Twentieth-Century American Literature from Ohio University in 2007, and currently lives in Izmir, Turkey, where St. Paul trode. He teaches courses in American culture and literature at Dokuz Eylül University.