Live from the Bowery Poetry Club: Alan Semerdjian (2)

Gartal and the Armenian Poetry Project are proud to release this audio clip recorded live at the Bowery Poetry Club in New York City on April 2, 2010. Click to hear Alan Semerdjian’s  reading of his poem Grandchildren of Genocide.

We think of bombfields and big when we think of genocide.

We think of mass cleansing.  We think in holes.  We think

the whole page.  We think what’s under it, what they’ve been

covering up.  We think there might have been people

in those whole pages.

We think of chambers when we think of genocide.  We think

of people crying.  We think of people climbing.  We think of

people climbing and crying, crying and climbing.  We think of both

people climbing and people crying.  We think in chambers. 

We think in those horrible chambers when we think of genocide.

Those horrible 20^th century chambers.

When we think of genocide, we don’t think of mountains and deserts.

We don’t think of bazaars.  When we do think of them,

we don’t think of young democratic people and pomegranates. 

We don’t think of young democratic people with pomegranates

at bazaars when we think of genocide.  We don’t think of them

next to our grandfathers.  We don’t think of next to them.

Then there are young democratic people who don’t eat pomegranates

and don’t think of genocide.  We don’t think of them either.

We don’t think of them when we think of genocide, but we do think

of moustaches.  We don’t think of long and lovely moustaches,

but we think of moustaches when we think of genocide. 

We don’t think of grandfathers plural or generations of grandfathers

before that when we think of genocide.  But we do think of mothers.

And mothers before that.  But we do think of mothers,

but we don’t think of women.  We don’t think of women dancing. 

We don’t hear the music when we think of genocide. 

These things we think about and not hear when we think about genocide.

And we don’t think of civil war as genocide.  We hear about it.

We don’t call in enough with such information. 

We think about reconciliation, but we don’t

think about reconciliation when we think about genocide. 

We don’t study the memorials, we don’t explain the play in papers,

we don’t shake hands and make up.  When we think of genocide,

we do other things with our hands.