Live from the Bowery Poetry Club: Tina Demirdjian

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 Tina Demirdjian’s reading of her poem Compact.

She left her compact

blue and gold

lying upside down

in her drawer

hidden

in its white powder

something she always

wanted to tell me.

But her eyes,

now empty cups of milk

no longer remembered.

Inside was the mirror

full of powder

forty years old

opening for me

like a woman

telling secrets

of her flesh.

In silence

pink white flakes

covered my hands.

I bent down kneeling

to look further

inside her drawer.

Each time I opened

the compact

a sound, click,

of a half cricket

the sound of lips

pressing together.

There were whispers

contained

In small breaths.

I clicked a kiss

in the mirror

of white powder

and became

a white curtain.

I was sheer,

a translucent flag

and saluted her

with all my flesh

and then

with the click

of my lips

closed

her white body.

Snap!

like the clap of hands

like magic

life vanishes

"dust to dust"

opening and closing

happening

almost all at once.