The English speakers at the rest stop
along the highway from Izmir to Bergama
are from Calgary and when I said I am
from Massachusetts, they complained
that the Turks call them Americans,
and I said, but aren’t you, and we laughed
with the easy humor of travelers
with something in common and meeting
by chance while the dark-haired boy pumping
gas stared, puzzling at so many foreigners.
The Aegean breeze wrestled the rising
Asian sun about to lick our brows
and a waitress smoked at the side door,
half in one world, half in another.
Gary Metras’s new books of poetry are River Voice II (Adastra Press, 2020), Captive in the Here (Cervena Barva Press 2018), and White Storm (Presa Press 2018), short-listed for the Mass. Poetry Book of the Year by the Mass. Center for the Book. The author of seven books and thirteen chapbooks of poetry, his poems have appeared in over 250 journals, including America, The Common, Poetry, Poetry East, and Poetry Salzburg Review. He lives in Easthampton, Massachusetts, where he was inducted as the city’s inaugural Poet Laureate in April 2018.
along the highway from Izmir to Bergama
are from Calgary and when I said I am
from Massachusetts, they complained
that the Turks call them Americans,
and I said, but aren’t you, and we laughed
with the easy humor of travelers
with something in common and meeting
by chance while the dark-haired boy pumping
gas stared, puzzling at so many foreigners.
The Aegean breeze wrestled the rising
Asian sun about to lick our brows
and a waitress smoked at the side door,
half in one world, half in another.
Gary Metras’s new books of poetry are River Voice II (Adastra Press, 2020), Captive in the Here (Cervena Barva Press 2018), and White Storm (Presa Press 2018), short-listed for the Mass. Poetry Book of the Year by the Mass. Center for the Book. The author of seven books and thirteen chapbooks of poetry, his poems have appeared in over 250 journals, including America, The Common, Poetry, Poetry East, and Poetry Salzburg Review. He lives in Easthampton, Massachusetts, where he was inducted as the city’s inaugural Poet Laureate in April 2018.
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