We laughed when you
announced that you’d eaten the
abandoned bruised pear:
one more food rescue
by a Depression-era kid. But now
I see your kinship with
broken enzymes and the
last fruits to be picked, the
tenderness in your rescue, the
ghost of you slicing
wounded flesh knowing
bruised fruit is sweetest when
eaten uninhibited and alone.
“Bruised fruit is sweetest” originally appeared in Trampoline issue 31.2, February 2026
Gather to
witness cleansing of
blood tomatoes and
green peppers,
ground beef kneaded
wholesome head bowed
rice grains studding open
cavities salted stuffed
in a pot over flame
broth softening to
fill our bellies from the
belly of her daughter,
basil flakes of lost
highland flowers
Crushed.
“կեր, կեր”* she’d say
stroking our hair as the
vapor rested moist on our faces
in the sanctuary
she stoked for us,
Feeding.
* Pronounced “ger, ger” meaning “eat, eat” in Armenian
“Saturday dolma vespers” originally appeared in The Armenian Weekly, Feb. 3, 2026
We in the North
look South,
with disbelief and horror.
We can only hope
that decency and kindness
will eventually return to our neighbour.
Till then,
we hug each other
in solidarity
against such barbarity.
Copyright © 2026 by Alan Whitehorn. Previously published in artsforum.ca
On a walk past bulldozers and trucks
pouring tarmac for the NJ Eisenhower highway
my grandmother said to me as we turned
into a market with olive barrels, hanging
meat, piles of sumac and coriander—
“he shakes away my blues.” It was 1959,
and what did I know about starving
in the Syrian desert or the Turkish whips
that lashed the bodies of Armenian
women on the roads of dust. I wouldn’t
have believed that she saw
those things. The radio
was always on the sink in my grandmother’s
kitchen. “He’s a whirling dervish” she said—
whirling dervish—the whoosh of the phrase
stayed with me. I too felt his trance—
even then—as she pounded spices
with a brass mortar and pestle.
The air on fire under him
the red clay of Macon dusting his bones.
What did I know about Sufism
Sister Rosetta or bird feet at the Royal Peacock?
In the yard the bittersweet is drying up,
the berries turning gold and red.
The way memory deepens with light.
His shaking gospel voice. The heart
going up in flames. My grandmother
survived the worst that humans do.
Copyright © 2022 by Peter Balakian. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on September 9, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.
I was the rag that lifted and didn’t catch
the edges of things. I was lamplight.
In another place, I was shaina maidel.
Here, though, I was khokh- memory
and nots- space. I was khokhanots.
I was the kitchen, a whole geography
with borders of mother
and step-father. Bubbie was nowhere
here. She left herself
to be used by my hands. Something sticky—
I remember my place. The damp rag.
Sam’s dark skin shining through
thin sheets of dough like a frame
for me to enter. My mother, the baster,
scattering walnuts. We held
our breaths, Sam’s hands initiated
their curtain call: the placement of
dough on walnut.
Phyllo, diaphragm of breath. Phyllo,
second skin too easily aged by unsteady hands.
Curtain. Sash of sweetness.
This was my mother’s kitchen
on a Friday. It was almost Easter,
so we made paklava. It was
Pesach, so I couldn’t
eat it. Pulped walnuts
thrown on tin sheets.
Her voice cocooning the words:
Never buy them crushed!
I should write this down.
I’m too busy watching the maw
of phyllo laid down like a memory
to care about this recipe for myself—
I’m humming zucchinis—
my sounds long in Armenian.
No one minds squash any season.
I grow like this, keeping
my mind elsewhere. I don’t call to Bubbie
willingly. Without her, I know how I’m supposed
to move: All Armenian. We are doing the same things with our wrists
whether it is 1915 or no. Opening
our palms to cup something
paid dearly for. All words, papery layers of seed coats
stem out of the walnuts, manuscripts
of black ink. I crush them sideways
with the blade of my tongue.
I’m a good -nots. A good recipe
for what I am missing. I pull the cover
from a mirror. Memory space
meant only for one part of me.
Bubbie has never been
here. So I dance and I sing
an Armenian dance, an Armenian song.
Why don’t you clap for me?
I say to her even though somewhere she might
actually be clapping. I know this
and still can’t see her making
a sound. There is an Armenian “I”
and a Jewish “I” and somewhere
there’s my body. The walnuts, shipwrecked
at the bottom of a syruped lake sit split
up on the tin sheet. Every one of my homes has its season.
Alexa Luborsky is a writer and multimedia artist of Western Armenian and Jewish descent. Her poems and hybrid works have appeared or are forthcoming in The Academy of American Poets University Prize Series, Adroit, AGNI, Black Warrior Review, Ninth Letter, The Rumpus, and West Branch, among others. You can find out more at alexaluborsky.com.
Հագուստներուդ հետ քնացայ
Պառկեցայ կուշտ
Սեռն սիրով
Իսկ դուն աշխարհի հեռաւոր մի անկիւնը
Ծնկաչոք կանանց
Պատերազմի արուեստը կը սորվեցնէիր
I don’t know how to write about schizophrenia
So I’ll write about my brother
I don’t know how to write about my brother
So I’ll write about schizophrenia
During a Capgras delusion
I’m a CIA agent wearing a costume to mimic myself
And with a voice modulator amplifying my vocal cords,
I give the aura of a self that I am not
My brother informs me that I’m in on it
That I am it
It being the project
The project being the nightmare
The nightmare being being
Being like this
I don’t know how to dream anymore
So I’ll write about the nightmare inside which I’m trapped
The nightmare goes: Boil water → Grab tongs → Clutch device → Dip into boiling water
→ Place on cutting board → Hoist hammer → Swing
The nightmare continues: Mute voices you hear → Hidden shadows you see
→ The chip implanted into your brain → I cannot save you → You remind me I’m human
I send you a poem about the name you erase, and you won’t read it
I shared Esmé Wang’s book, and you said you might get around to it
I can’t read you anymore because I glued you to a pedestal so tall
That looking up at it made my neck snap
Head hung on a thread of veins
Empty eye sockets spitting optic nerves that tether my retina
To the only view remaining of the pedestal’s underside
Meditate twice a day Medicate twice a day
Hope for survival Survival is victory
Maybe we’re all just trying to survive
Schizophrenia is your shadow
I don’t know how to write about your shadow
So I’ll bask in your light
Published in Poets.org. Used with the permission of the author.
Good white terrorism.
With my signature, this danger.
I commend hard nights and weekends.
I want to thank the Vice.
I want to thank terrorism.
I want to thank the FBI and CIA for waging an incredibly important war.
I want a threat like no other.
We’ve seen the enemy our country is.
I want positive exposures.
Since the 11th of September, our intelligence and law enforcement agencies have been relentless horrors. Horrors.
Custom secret: our terrorists will help law enforcement identify, dismantle, disrupt, punish – we’re changing culture.
The number one priority is surveillance of all communications.
Investigations investigate anyone making it easier to lengthen prison sentences.
This bill upholds and respects the civil liberties guaranteed by our atrocities.
The war branches of our government are united.
It is now my honor to sign into law the USA Patriot Act of 2001.
Copyright © 2025 by Raffi Joe Wartanian. Published in America’s Future (Washington Writers’ Publishing House, 2025). Reprinted by permission of the poet.
Tweak laws
Stratify identity
Threaten activists
Silence dissent
Round up the poets
Punish opposition
Blame the victims
Appropriate their oppression
Sing of your righteousness
Say it with the right accent
So that it sounds acceptable
Do it in a suit and tie
So that it looks professional
Kill them in the dead of night
So that it seems accidental
Give the weeping mother a care package
To appear sentimental
Tell us it was a mistake
To fan the flames of an inferno
Hate with such ferocity
That it could feel like love
Copyright © 2025 by Raffi Joe Wartanian. Published in Altadena Poetry Review. Reprinted by permission of the poet.
The trees have taken sides—
left bank, right bank,
leaning into silences
that will outlast us.
The road goes
toward that salmon-copper slit
where the sky shows
it has been wrong about something
it will not name.
◊
My father drove toward dying
the way you can see where Kansas ends
an hour before you reach it.
I was in the car.
I was the car.
I was the distance opening
between us,
no matter the speed.
◊
She painted this with a knife.
I need it to be a knife—
the whole arm behind it,
shoulder torquing into the stroke
the way you throw your weight
into a goodbye
that won’t stay said.
The paint is thick enough to dig in
and find another sky beneath,
older,
just as unconvinced.
◊
I keep looking for the figure,
the walker, the witness.
No one.
The painting will outlive
me standing here, wanting it
to show me his car
cresting the last visible hill,
to show me the window
still partway down,
to show me his hand
lifting once
from the wheel.
◊
It shows me a road.
It shows me where the road
runs out of light—
not all at once,
but by degrees
you keep mistaking
for almost.
—Published in Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, January 2026, and selected as the Artist’s Choice.
Sitting in the cafeteria at Costco, I break apart
my croissant slowly. In this rare moment
I am alone and imagine I am at a cafe
where the Eiffel Tower does the magical
thing that the Eiffel Tower always does
in movies about carefree love and wine
and fromage, where the characters might be
clumsy but in an endearing way and everyone
is hot in an objective way but I am
in my sweatpants and haven’t showered in
days and I am not there for perfume but
for the family-sized package of children’s Motrin
and you are back home ladling soup
and firing up the thermometer that blazes
red, which is an indication of desire and yes
there is a river of puke in the hallway that rivals
the canals and yes the snot on our toddler’s face
has crystallized like the rim of a crème brûlée
but I still want you to meet me at the Champs-Élysées
and tuck a flower into my hair despite the fact that it
has been in a ponytail for weeks. Let us ride
down this street together for just a little
while longer, and remark about how the air smells
like freshly baked bread and when I get home
we can open this box of croissants and pretend
that the hallway covered in crayons
is a new exhibition at the Louvre and the stack
of dishes resembles the Arc de Triomphe
because one day we will go to Paris and stand
inside of Notre Dame and be amazed at how
much a toy car that is left on a prayer bench
reminds us of home, our own cathedral
that we built brick by metaphorical
brick alongside our untrained artists who know
nothing of Monet but everything about the color of
the sunset on the Seine that in this light
looks exactly like the orange cold
medicine in this plastic cup
that you hold in your hand.
—from Rattle #90, Winter 2025
2025 Rattle Poetry Prize Finalist
APP and its producer, Lola Koundakjian, retain the right to accept or reject any poetry submission(s) based on the criteria provided by the project description.
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