{"id":281,"date":"2018-08-17T01:05:14","date_gmt":"2018-08-17T01:05:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/?p=281"},"modified":"2018-07-26T23:07:50","modified_gmt":"2018-07-26T23:07:50","slug":"two-poems-by-carl-boon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/2018\/08\/17\/two-poems-by-carl-boon\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Poems by Carl Boon"},"content":{"rendered":"
Carl Boon lives in Izmir, Turkey, where he teaches courses in American culture and literature at 9 Eyl\u00fcl University. His poems have appeared in many magazines, including Posit, The Maine Review, and Diagram. A Pushcart Prize nominee, Boon recently edited a volume on the sublime in American cultural studies.<\/em><\/h6>\n

 <\/p>\n

Hot<\/h3>\n

It is very hot and I am not
\ngoing to tell you you are beautiful
\nand I am not going to say I\u2019m impressed
\nbecause you\u2019ve read Proust or Goethe
\nor even weary Dostoyevsky who
\ncontemplated certain corners
\nof the universe in worn boots.
\nIt is very hot and you are not
\nmore beautiful than Merve who
\nchecks my eggs and beer and detergent
\nthrough register 3 at the grocery
\nand writes heartfelt letters to a man
\nin Bursa that say the weather is hot
\nand I am not as beautiful as you who
\ncrosses the shadows of the Ulu Mosque,
\na shadow yourself in dark clothes.
\nIt is very hot and you don\u2019t matter
\nand maybe I don\u2019t matter
\nbut a brick falls and a bat swallows
\ntwo or more mosquitoes and maybe
\neverything is just all right.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Metonymies<\/p>\n

My father became a blue suit
\nthat smelled of tobacco and mint.<\/p>\n

My mother had a body, but she
\nbecame a library book, a mystery\u2014<\/p>\n

ink and use and coffee with milk.
\nThey spoke adult things while I<\/p>\n

rearranged my Legos into a thousand
\ndefinitions of what might be.<\/p>\n

I was carpeting becoming cologne,
\nand that bad gum smell in packs<\/p>\n

of baseball cards. Only later I\u2019d be
\nthe avocado lotion of the girl<\/p>\n

I loved, and she a home long after
\nit had burned. On those summer days<\/p>\n

when the frequent swallows tore
\nagainst the sky, we all were lake-<\/p>\n

water and Welch\u2019s grape juice,
\nand the plastic that seals tubs<\/p>\n

of Reiter sour cream. My father
\nheaped it on his baked potato, feeling<\/p>\n

sad, the jazz in his skull blooming
\nthen fading. After dinner, dishes,<\/p>\n

my mother rose, Dean Koontz
\nin her hand, the smell of impatiens<\/p>\n

everywhere inside the Ohio dark
\nas the city gassed the mosquitoes<\/p>\n

and that gas made us all the same\u2014
\ndoubts and intrigues and flesh.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Carl Boon lives in Izmir, Turkey, where he teaches courses in American culture and literature at 9 Eyl\u00fcl University. His poems have appeared in many magazines, including Posit, The Maine Review, and Diagram. A Pushcart Prize nominee, Boon recently edited a volume on the sublime in American cultural studies.   Hot It is very hot … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa867U-4x","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":282,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281\/revisions\/282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}