There are many things I Am Not Allowed To Tell Anyone about Alpay: that he is a pillowhog, for one, or that he spends more time in the bathroom every morning than my sixteen year-old niece. These prohibitions make sense, but other things I Am Not Allowed to Tell Anyone puzzle me. I Am Not Allowed, for instance, To Tell Anyone Alpay is a poet, and that he went to the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. I Am Not Allowed To Tell Anyone that he has a book out, or that a Pulitzer-Prize winner wrote the introduction, nor am I Allowed To Tell Anyone that Alpay has won the state art award in two of the last four states we’ve lived. He is allowed to tell people these on his web site, however, apparently with the hope that nobody actually visits it.
Other women may have had love poems written about them, but how many men write poems for their kitty? Or love poems that include mention of their wife’s compulsive paperclip collection? There are reasons why after 19 years, we’re still going strong.