Lines Across Cities (story of a tv show told in a poem)

Istanbul. 2018.

The woman in the hijab

And long, button down

Blue gray coat

Exits her house

On the outskirts of the city

Walking through fields

Copses, crossing bridges

She takes the bus

To the modern apartment

Lit by natural light

That she cleans each Monday

She puts several containers of

Homemade baked goods

On the kitchen counter

Before she leaves

Next, she’s facing

An uncovered, pretty

Intense-to-the-point-of-vibrating

Forty-something psychiatrist

For her first appointment

The conversation is found

In their eyes

The gaps and ellipses

The verbal references

That require

Steps to link them

To an emotion

Or an experience

Next, we see the psychiatrist

Talking to her own therapist

Who is also uncovered

And poised in the way

A volcanic mountain

Appears to be still

From a distance

The psychiatrist

Is deeply upset

By her meeting

With her new patient

Who she is treating

For fainting spells

Covered women from the provinces

Traditional Muslim women

Come to work in the city

Rattle, even enrage her

She lets slip that she is estranged

From her sister who is religious

Now the second therapist

Is at the apartment

Cleaned by the patient

In the hijab and long coat

She, the therapist, is the lover

Of the handsome, red-bearded

Man who lives there

The woman in the hijab

Returns home on buses and on foot

To a falling-down house on a hill

Her brother is a tall

Brooding fellow with a mustache

His wife is ravaged by depression

She looks out the window

Perhaps remembering something

She can speak only

Quietly to her son and daughter

The brother works late nights

As a bouncer at a club

He asks his wife questions

Which she struggles to answer

This provokes frustration

And reeling tantrums from him

He only relaxes when speaking to

The imam who leads reading groups

And collects charity donations

And who maintains a flower garden

Down the road

Lines across cities

Roads and streets

Cell phone towers swaying

Bus routes into the past

Zones of stillness

Only occasionally

People who see

Speak to each other

Now we see Concert footage

From the 1970s,

The echoing singing

Of a man who enters

a trance of longing

He seems to hover Above the stage