Alan Semerdjian: Forensic Knot Analysis

Then, they taught me how to tie my shoes,
this band of migrant characters:
Monkey’s Fist, Sheetbend
Round Turn, Turk’s Head,
Prussick, Diamond
Rodi, Half-hitch.
One is a snake charmed in the grass.
One is a kneeling buddha,
one, directions for angels, and
another, a judaic priest lost in Williamsburg.
One is the captain of the
Harvard crew team.
One, a plowing tool.
There are llamas and cranes,
two swans on a lake,
kangaroos with celtic staffs-
workbooks of people- in my alphabet.
They parade around the incensed corners
Of my life freezing in tangled poses when I dare to look.
A musketeer’s ostrich plume hat-
tricorne cocked,
pomegranate seeds, halva manifested,
all a turn of the lip around the word
asvadtzim, my god. Jigsaw minded composition,
theater of angles, the soft script of candle and flame
alive in a night about to breeze,
alone on a page of resurrections,
you are the desert wizard in a sandstorm
conducting last dances
of a fading people in
secret evening gatherings of ink.

Copyright Alan Semerdjian
Used here by kind permission of the author