For two years
the muezzin’s song
was our lullaby
and wakeup call—
familiar like the aroma
of yoğurt çorbası,
never a favourite,
though we had it often.
The recitation
poured from minarets,
purring between
stark apartment blocks
like a housecat
doing warm figure eights
tight against
its owner’s shins.
Even now, a kernel
of melody persists,
suggesting a silence
we’d never known was there,
like the patch of wall
you find behind a painting,
the only spot
that the sun hasn’t faded.
If Sting’s ‘Englishman in New York’ was a yin, David Russomano would be the corresponding yang: an American copywriter just outside of London. Between earning his BA in English from Messiah College and his MA in Creative Writing from Kingston University, he taught English in Indonesia, Thailand, and Turkey – experiences which inform a great deal of his work. Though many of Russomano’s poems have a relatively straightforward narrative quality, he also dabbles in more experimental approaches. His poetry has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize and inclusion in Sundress Publications’ 2012 Best of the Net Anthology. He also received an honorable mention in Words, Pauses, Noises’ inaugural poetry competition. In 2014, Kingston University awarded him the Faber and Faber Creative Writing MA Prize. You can find his work in a number of publications, including issue 70 of Decanto Magazine and upcoming issues of The Dawntreader and The London Miscellany.
I love the two concrete moments in this moment–the “warm” cat and the spot on the wall behind the frame hung on a wall. I could feel the weight of that furball against my leg, and I pictured an old yellowed wall with a nice, clean white square imprinted on it. Thanks for sharing, Mr. Russomano!