Aida Zilelian: Arshile

Last Painting (The Black Monk), by Arshile Gorky (USA, b.Vilayet of Van, Armenia, Ottoman Empire) 1948. Oil on canvas. 78.6 x 101.5 cm, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, Inv. no. 564 (1978.72)

Arshile jan[1],
if we had been friends
I would have smoked cigarettes with you
until my throat was raw and made you listen
to Billie Holiday (did you know “Strange Fruit”?) while
nursing vodka (I would have hated but conceded to) just for you.
I read you loved vodka.

Arshile,
you could have rung my apartment bell
at any hour of the night
and I would have let you in, cradled your face in my hands,
consumed by your wild, vacant eyes
and said nothing.

Love could not transcend the
shadow of ghosts that claimed you long before you escaped,
fled the shores of Lake Van,
your mother’s bosom cold from death –
a body that could no longer soak up your child tears.
This is not why I love you.

Arshile,
I would never have been so star-struck
that your death could have surprised me,
but I would never have forgiven myself
for not deciphering the suicide note
in the slants of your abstractions
and unsettling hues of teal, magenta,
annihilated by frenzied strokes of black.[2]
They incriminate you but,
I would not have seen.

All I know is that your face,
your dark moustache, the grace of your troubled eyes and swept back hair
leave me to think that I could not have saved you, and
loved you nonetheless.

Aida Zilelian



[1] An abbreviation of the Armenian word ‘janig’ (a term of endearment – i.e. darling, love
[2] Arshile Gorky’s last painting, Last Painting (The Black Monk) 1948


Aida Zilelian is a first generation American-Armenian writer and educator from Queens, NY. Her fiction explores the depths of love and family relationships, culture and the connections between characters that transcend time and circumstance. Her first novel (unpublished) The Hollowing Moon, was one of the top three finalists of the Anderbo Novel Contest. The sequel The Legacy of Lost Things was published in 2015 (Bleeding Heart Publications) and was the recipient of the 2014 Tölölyan Literary Award. Aida has been featured on NPR, The Huffington Post, Kirkus Reviews, Poets & Writers, the New York Times, and various reading series throughout Queens and Manhattan. Her short story collection These Hills Were Meant for You was shortlisted for the 2018 Katherine Anne Porter Award.

Originally published in The Ekphrasic Review

ՅԻՇԷՔ Hishek: Armenian Writers on Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day

Tuesday, April 24 at 7 PM - 9 PM

Babycastles, 145 W 14th St, New York, New York 10011

🇦🇲🇦🇲🇦🇲

Alina Gregorian
Christopher Atamian
Aida Zilelian
Lola Koundakjian

🇦🇲🇦🇲🇦🇲

Alina Gregorian is a poet and artist, and author of the chapbooks Flags for Adjectives (Diez) and Navigational Clouds (Monk Books). Some poems can be found in Boston Review, Prelude, BOMB Magazine, among others. Alina lives in Brooklyn, NY and can be found here alinagregorian.com.

Christopher Atamian is a writer and creative producer of Armenian and Italian background and the grandson of Armenian Genocide survivors. He studied comparative literature as an undergrad at Harvard; television and film production at USC Film School and international marketing at Columbia Business School. Apart from creative endeavors and professional activities as a senior executive in leading media companies and consultancies (ABC, Ogilvy & Mather, Hill + Knowlton Strategies), Atamian has concentrated on community activism. He is the former President and a current board member of AGLA New York, and in 2004 founded Nor Alik, a non-profit cultural organization responsible for producing the First New York Armenian International Film Festival. Atamian also co-produced the OBIE Award-winning play Trouble in Paradise in 2006, as well as several music videos and short films. He was selected for the 2009 Venice Biennale on the basis of his video Sarafian’s Desire and received a 2015 Ellis Island Medal of Honor. He continues to contribute critical pieces to leading publications such as The New York Times Book Review, The Huffington Post, SCENES Media and The Weekly Standard. His first book of poetry A Poet in Washington Heights was published this year by Nauset Press and awarded the 2017 Tölölyan Literary Prize. He was born and still resides in New York City with his dog Chip.

Aida Zilelian is a New York City writer. Her novel THE LEGACY OF LOST THINGS was released in March 2015 (Bleeding Heart Publications) and was the recipient of the 2014 Tololyan Literary Award. Her stories have been published in over twenty-five journals and several anthologies. She has been featured on NPR, the New York Times, the Huffington Post, Kirkus Reviews, among other radio and print platforms. She is also the curator of Boundless Tales, the longest-running reading series in Queens, NY. She recently completed her second novel, The Last Echo Through the Plains. Her short story collection These Hills Were Meant for You was shortlisted in the 2018 Katherine Anne Porter Prize.

Lola Koundakjian is a regular reader in New York City and has appeared in four international poetry festivals. She curates a poetry reading series at the Zohrab Information Center in midtown Manhattan, and since 2006, has promoted Armenian culture with texts, translations and audio for the Armenian Poetry Project. She is the author of The Accidental Observer (2011 USA) and Advice to a Poet (2014 Peru; 2015 USA). Her work has also appeared in journals and anthologies on three continents. www.lolakoundakjian.com

Live from Holy Cross: Aida Zilelian reading Daniel Varoujan

Click to hear the audio segment

Aida Zilelian-Silak - photo by Khatchik Turabian

In My Father’s Prison

I was a little boy when I visited you

In your dark cell in the prison;

Mother had taken ill. I was wandering

Between the prison and her bed.

They informed you of my visit.

You came to the iron-bar gate

That blocked our passionate embrace – what a crime –

You were silent and sad.

You were frail and so longing to see sunlight.

Your beard, as if grown on bone, concealed your face. Oh,

Father you were a dead man.

You smiled when you saw me,

But that kind smile was a fake;

Like a blossomed water lily wrongly placed

On a lake of tears.

From behind the dark iron bars,

You stretched your lips to kiss mine.

Alas, our lips could not come close to touch.

We were like a cradle and a coffin.

Oh, how I wished to embrace you warmly,

Grant you the free world outside the cell,

Flood your eyes with the boundless sky seen

Through my own small pupils.

And to empty into your heart my days spent under the sun.

I wanted to flood your cell with roses and spring

And bury my youth and my future in your cell.

Oh, what a sad hour indeed.

I told you bit-by-bit all of the sufferings of our home:

The passing of granny; the illness of mom with her cough

That bursts the silence of the nights.

I told you that owls are dancing under the moon

On our roof;

That our rose vine withered this year

From the dry winds of the cemetery.

You were listening with an inquiry of questions.

When suddenly a cruel command,

- A command so evil – came to separate us;

- You left without  kissing me.

Standing there, gazing at your departure,

I cried there. Lonely and alone, I cried, Dad.

- A new vengeance was born in my chest –

The tears in my eyes were the echoes of my heart.

Oh, love of life, honest labor, thorny hearts,

Saintly things all thrown into filth.

They are like collapsed veins

In the much needed paths of survival.

Along with you, drowned in genocides,

I saw, lilacs and saints of all religions,

And Christs who were spit upon.

Translated by Herand M. Markarian