26 SCENES FROM TURNING 26 BY KAROLINA ZAPAL

Budapest 43 degrees sunny blue

shovels scrape concrete winter’s anesthesia

felt in waves

the lights dim in the theater

as usual

a woman is upset

I am in her assigned seat

in this country t / his language h / ER native tongue not mine

“widno” misses its English equivalent

it is light bright

has risen

trending words: god woman art etymology religion wife

C.D Wright uses a winner’s vocabulary

labyrinth cycle invisible lightning

graveyard edge ice fog

in a poetry workshop I was criticized for using “undergrad”

because it alienated my general audience

trending names: Olivia, Emma, Ava, Charlotte, Mia

Noah, Liam, Benjamin, Oliver, William

I think now I will be criticized for naming

my child Oliver or Olivia

my audience doesn’t trend

a l l t h e p e o p l e do not trend together

at a Starbucks on Király utca

cheery entrepreneurs assemble a group of mismatched chairs

from various corners of the store (is Starbucks a store

or restaurant?)

they source 99% of their coffee ethically people must be the 1%

I source 99% of my people ethically coffee is the 1%

I see the word “ficus” but read “focus”

the other who sees “focus” but reads “ficus”

must be able to grow wings see stains

as real colors

when the dishwasher makes a sudden clanging,

noise it alerts me that a glass has outwitted my methods

of security, is making time on stratospheric highways

I blow out a Yankee candle

make / shift wish

earlier I watched tennis balls fall

one-by-one

onto a drum set as he laughed a soft texture

he asks me how to pronounce “hemaztophagy”

I swear on my science degree

I missed class that day

“Do you like girls?” “Occasionally”

throws a lampshade over having to develop

sexually

today’s top tweet:

“I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made” - FDR

my ex has to ask his girlfriend if it’s okay

to collaborate with me on a poem he says it’s his choice to ask

it’s my choice to never step foot in a zoo

but I will someday with my child

watch all the men who could have been his father

ask women who will never be his mother

for permission to meet a little boy who is not their son

I judge you by the enemies I have made

the bathtub has one tile missing

we have to get some heavy bleach he says

I bathe on a stain in the shape of a penis

he starts a conversation then doesn’t text back

I am learning the boring

adult way to hold

back

how can someone live on a balcony

with a marbled child

nailed underneath it

forlorn on Christmas trees discarded

some bundled with improvised rope others ragged

I miss when my parents would come back

early telling me the wind was too harsh

to ski

I wake up singing

in my head: “I watch the crowd flow

and think—I love I love”