kissing,

what your hands

can’t offer

that width

there, on my tongue

This is my tooth,

a lonely, pointlessly-waved bone

The bone’s widest at the rib

my tongue knows this

dictionaried


I’m gulping

shopping for an unconditional breath

and all knowledge expires

oh, I say,

so this is a thought


Across from everyone: a stilled and spinning everything

everything there, at the height

those shallows, that beauty

that love, that joy

and like something without comparison

outside the day


I’ll forget so nothing can get in between

I’m stopping


don’t let my kisses

get between the one I kiss

I’m rubbing my throat


which is also a kind of

sign


my tongue gets between

as if it’s celebrating

that hunger, that satiation

how your meal’s at stake

a memory forma mapping from mouth to depths

resisting getting lost

from below

kissing,

I know what I don’t own anymore what isn’t mine

but what might become mine

but won’t be found by looking

but can’t be won by working

but is within reach

but still


claiming no condition, I kissed

---

Handan Demir (she/they) is a poet, essayist and digital archivist. Her poetry is currently shaped by the visceral experience of loss, pathology as method, chronic illness as haunting, and the not-yet-conscious healing possibilities we find through intimacy, medical herbs and fireflies. Trained as a linguist and historian, their archival practice is focused on enhancing accessibility through semantic interventions in metadata, community-led archival practices and bottom-up historiographies. They contribute to critical archival theory through their writing. In 2024, Demir was awarded the Arkadaş Z. Özger Poetry Prize and her first collection of poetry, Az Daha Tekrar [Little More Repetition], has been published by Mayıs Press. Besides writing and cultural practices, she is engaged in sonic arts and a collaborative artistic research project.

Ayaz O. Muratoglu is a poet, essayist, and translator living in Istanbul. They were born on a Tuesday in April.