Esther Heboyan: LEO KRIKORIAN’S IMPLIED SPACES

Rue des Blancs Manteaux

            there 
                     was
                           Leo’s 
                                   art 
                                       studio
            and 
                   there
             stood 
                                    Leo
with stories

            of 
            San Francisco

            Blabbermouth  Monday
            at
            The Place
                 Beat drifters’
             indigo credence
                 Ginsberg’s howling angels
                                                        Kerouac’s likes’ 
            ochre 
            decadence



Rue des Blancs Manteaux

   there 
                      was
                               Leo’s
                               art 
                               studio 
          and 
                     there
                               poised 
                               Leo
with stories

         of 
         Armenian Fresno

         violet years into 
         crop-picking urgency
               the longest ride East
                                  in a brown jalopy
                                               the G.I. Bill 
                                                          to change his destiny
                                                                      Black Mountain College 
          under
          Ilya Bolotowsky



Rue des Blancs Manteaux

          there 
                   was
                              Leo’s  art   studio
          and 
                   there
                              held   out   Leo

with stories

           of 
           artsy overflow

           in them days
                      paying homage
                                 to monochromatic 
                                 orange
                                            chiselled 
                                                       at the exact edge
           greenness craves for 
           salvage



Rue des Blancs Manteaux

           there 
                      was
                               Leo
                                ’s art studio
           and 
                      there 
                                smoked away
                                Leo
with stories

           of 
           Parisian come and go

           lookers look in 
                       and all around
                                  collectors collect 
                                             to no amount
                                                        op art’s jagged 
                                                                    jazzy sound
                                                                               yellowness red cadmium
          does
          mound



Rue des Blancs Manteaux

          there 
          was
          Leo’s art
          studio
          and 
          there sat
          Leo
          to muse

with stories 

          of 
          azulene Sausalito

          four times wed to
                    winsome women
                               in beige
                                           fourfold gone
                                                     no children
                                                                it just
          never 
          happen’d



Rue des Blancs Manteaux

          Passing by Leo’s art studio 
          I see Leo
          through a stained glass window
          drawing on grid paper 
          in amber glow

I wish
          I had passed by
                        more often
                                    Leo I know
                                                 smiles at Piet Mondrian

                                                 and no doleful music 
                                       from the white organ
                          shall disarray 
               the immaculate mauve of
your yin and yang



               © Esther Heboyan, Paris, October 2007

Esther Heboyan was born in Istanbul, Turkey. She moved at an early age to Germany then to France, and lived in Great-Britain and the United States before settling back in Paris.

She has an M.A. in Journalism, from University of Iowa, Iowa City; a Ph.D in American literature, Université Paris III-Sorbonne Nouvelle, and is an Associate Professor at the Université d’Artois, Arras.

She has completed literary translations from Turkish into French. Her short stories have been published in Ararat Quarterly, New York. Her collection of stories, Les Passagers d’Istanbul, was published in Marseilles, Parenthèses, in 2006. She writes in French and in English.