Peter Balakian: My Mother’s Sink

My mother hated the sink that came with our new colonial house.
Had it ripped out. Then found in an art shop a four foot slab
of Italian marble with a bowl of bronze fish swirling the white porcelain—
handles and spout –high legs—all bronze, a bathroom sink just for the kids she said—
Washing up each day— I stared through shaving cream and spit—at the
bronze fish under toothpaste, suds, and cream —

years later—it hit me every time I returned—as I spit and shaved:
the fish of Paul Klee, Matisse, Jan Breughel, slithering tails of Tintoretto —

all seeped in me—
the way that time patinas your skin.

Even now my brain sinks into the tepid water of that basin—
the bronze fish swimming around the black hole of the drain


where my mother, too, has gone—into the grainy waves of that marble.

This poem appeared in Plume.

PETER BALAKIAN: Pace and Tempo

You wake to a slat of light

sound of dogs barking in the warm air

the nothing that surrounds you is

far and near from the bombing in another country.

Not far from the dictator who wants to take

over your own country—nor from the brush

strokes you called up last night

from a still-life with oranges that you bit into

in thin air over the balcony looking out at the Hudson.

Riparius: flow from the source down a long

basin into the ocean beyond your body. You see

what you can and what you can— you take in—

to let go—- as your eye marks the horizon—

the moment    the flow goes back in

to— you—- and that ebb that is always

— on its way.

This poem appeared in Plume

Peter Balakian is the author of 9 books of poems including Ozone Journal which won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for poetry; his recent book of poems is New York Trilogy (University of Chicago Press, 2025). He teaches at Colgate University

 

National Banned Books Week in the U.S. is October 4-10 2026

 

A small but vocal group in the US is driving the current flood of book bans in school and public libraries across the country. It's important to counter those voices by uniting in support of the freedom to read in our local communities. Can you and your community unite against book bans?

I, Lola Koundakjian, believe: 

• Reading is a foundational skill, critical to future learning and to exercising our democratic freedoms.
• We can trust individuals to make their own decisions about what they read and believe.
• Parents have the right to guide their children's reading, but parents should not be making decisions for other parents' children. Specifically, a small group of parents should not dictate what books other people's children are allowed to read.
• Books are tools for understanding complex issues. Limiting young people's access to books does not protect them from life's complex and challenging issues.

Thank you for supporting the freedom to THINK, your local library and APP.


Lola Koundakjian
Producer and Curator
The Armenian Poetry Project