Imitation of the Eye by Özge Lena

Imitation of the Eye

Who doesn’t desire to run towards the sun

one carmine evening made of enough-is-enough,

and leave the normality of life they know behind?

Who doesn’t want to grow sudden wings to fly?

Once I saw a floating fish, bright like an impossible

dream. It jumped over the silver surface of the morning

sea, even managed to flee its being for almost a minute

before collapsing down. What I need are not wings

but eyes. Cold-blooded animals with eye-shaped spots

on their skins freeze in such a way that this eye is visible

to their hunter, which is life in our case, and the hunter

pauses before that unseeing eye. This is what I desire.

Özge Lena is a worldwide published poet who appears in The London Magazine, Modron Magazine, The International Times, and elsewhere in various countries, including the UK, USA, Canada, Singapore, Spain, Iceland, Serbia, France, etc. Özge's poetry was nominated both for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net and shortlisted for the Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition and the Ralph Angel Poetry Prize in 2021, then for The Plough Poetry Prize in 2023 and for the Black Cat Poetry Press Nature Prize in 2024. Her ecopoem "Undertaker" is forthcoming in the Convergence: Poetry on Environmental Impacts of War Anthology of Scarlet Tanager Books in the USA. Also, her poem “Here is a New Heart For You” was showcased in the Barnes & Noble bookshop for National Poetry Month.