James Baloian: Kingdom Come

Words bring no satisfaction
to a kingdom where space
has forgotten its name and season.
My fingers stick on the smoky windows
of a tired sky. The doors to each city
tighten their mouths into a zero.

I speak two languages:
one is the language of the stomach,
a vacant room that laments
in public like a tarnished statue.
The second sings the invisible poetry
of the homeland. Finally, I find
myself like a spider: content
with the darkness of corners.

I dream of wild, sweet fields
where stars twist into the milky dust of the cosmos,
and my poems lift like seeds
from the aprons of Armenian women,
pushing home; their hands red with dark earth.


James Baloian. This poem has appeared in Antioch Review.