At the Animal Hospital

Upon telling the receptionist my name,
She repeated it to herself with a smile
And an emphatic nod of her blonde head.
“My ex-boyfriend’s name is Ralph,” she remarked,
“And so is his father, and his grandfather.”
When I replied that I, too, am the third
Her red, thickly painted lips smiled again
And her pencil-thin eyebrows rose
As she gave me an exhaustive inventory
Of all the Ralphs she ever knew.
“Well, let’s see,” she enumerated,
“My old friend was a Ralph
But everyone called him Snapper
Because when he was a kid
They found him standing on two smooth stones
Which turned out to be two snapping turtles.
I went to my high school prom with a Ralphie.
Boy, did he look like Ralph Malph, too.
We never let him forget it.
Then there was Moose,
But I’m not sure how he got that name…”
I coughed lightly and looked down.
Seeing my dog’s left eye swollen shut
And drool dribbling from her hanging jowls,
The woman quickly finished registering my dog and me
And asked us to take a seat.

Ralph Hubbell (2004)

My Shadow

I am through
Dragging it
All these years
At the tip of my feet.
About time
We live a little,
My shadow
At someplace,
I
Someplace else.

Orhan Veli (Turkish)

Welcome to my new blog

I was lying awake at 4am, trying to overcome this unshakable jet-lag, when an idea came to me. Actually, it's really not my idea. A friend gave me the idea. Either way, the idea is to start a poetry blog. My hope is that it won't suffer from the same neglect that my other blog, www.twoyearsinturkey.blogspot.com, endures week in and week out. I'll post some of my own poems as well as poems by other writers. Some of my poems will be heavily revised, others will be shoddily scratched out and converted into a post. I'm not looking to get published here, people. Just looking to express. I begin with a poem by Orhan Veli, a Turkish poet.