The Zephyr poets at Litfest Pasadena 2021

Shahé Mankerian, Arminé Iknadossian and Alene Terzian-Zeitournian, the Zephyr Poets, will be appearing at LITFEST PASADENA 2021, Saturday and Sunday, May 15 and 16, 2021, Noon to 6:00 p.m.


LitFest Pasadena will livestream (12) 50-minute panel discussions as well as 10-minute interludes between each panel with pre-recorded readings and short films.

LitFest Pasadena 2021 programming will be accessible for FREE.

For more details, visit  http://litfestpasadena.org

Don't Look Away: A Literary Series for Artsakh continues Saturday October 17, 2020

Please join the International Armenian Literary Alliance (IALA) on Saturday, October 17th at 3:00 PM Eastern for the next installment of Don't Look Away, a literary series raising awareness and funds for #Artsakh, featuring Arthur Kayzakian, Lola Koundakjian, Mashinka F. Hakopian, Armen Davoudian, Nairi Hakhverdi, Alene Terzian and Alan Semerdjian.

Click here to register: http://bit.ly/ArtsakhSeries2

Live from the Bowery Poetry Club: Alene Terzian

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 Alene Terzian’s  reading of her poem Not a Love Poem # 31.

On our first date,

you killed a cat.

It wasn’t your fault

how it darted

into the empty street,

skidded and slipped,

landed in front of you.

For sure. The cat

crashed into you.

Its orange fur

lodged in the grill

of your sports car,

low to the ground,

hot rod suspension.

You wanted to drive

away, leave the tabby,

forget blood forming

small pools on asphalt.

I should have insisted

on cleaning up, but instead,

I left with you

For months, we found

patches of fur caught

in the metal wiring

of your car. I picked

them out each time,

buried them

in your backyard. 

Alene Terzian: Spoils of War

I.

In Beirut, a store owner makes

jewelry from shrapnel: 

corrugated metal bangles,

a hollow point bullet ring,

a welded pendant cross.

She says, material’s cheap,

mark up’s high—rich people

buy them for Christmas.

She has collected enough

metal to fill her garage,

has learned the difference

between grenade and bomb,

shell and casing.

The ones with serial numbers

cost double; real history,

she says, is a proof of purchase—

to get close enough without dying.

II.  

My father hides a square

of shrapnel behind trousers

in the closet, considers

the day he found it next to

his dead dog in the street.

When he thinks no one’s

looking, he polishes it,

smells the iron ore,

buffs its corners

of impact. It shines

in his palm. He thinks

it’s what killed the dog

that unlucky summer,            

keeps it as a souvenir

to remember the days

when the streets

were lined with skins.

Alene Terzian: Not a Love Poem #9

Click here for the audio clip Not a Love Poem #9 read by Lola Koundakjian.


My lover sent me a vacuum for my birthday.
A tall, yellow machine, hypo-allergenic
complete with adjustable, two speed motor
and five-year warranty.

First I vacuumed the bed sheets, sucked in cookie
crumbs, paperclips, bobby pins, one black sock
and a nickel caught in the folds of blue
duvet cover.

Then I moved through closets, over dress
shirts on wire hangers, half-knotted ties,
khakis and button flies, band camp t-shirts,
and a misplaced Playboy.

I went to the office next, behind the computer
desk and stacks of bills, appointment cards,
Doonesbury cartoons on corkboard, my picture,
and the ringed stain on wood.

Last were the tiny scraps of paper on the nightstand,
where we’d scribble parts of dreams: unicorns
and evil eyes, crosses and frozen lakes, parting
words, and that night with no moon.

I vacuum every room, collect fibers and hair,
watch them catch in blades, twist and settle
in ballooning bag. Each evening I empty it,
reflect on the perfect, loveliness of dust.




Copyright Alene Terzian. Used here by kind permission of the author.

Alene Terzian: Not a Love Poem #10: Modern Day Religion

Now that the worst is over, I will find
you kneeling in church, asking forgiveness
from one savior or another because you
were never good with god or apologies.

The light through stained-glass will form
rings around your head, and you will see
a halo, think you’ve been saved, flip
through genesis and chant god is great.

You will understand the language,
but never the faith, not with apostolic
conviction, not like the saints, staring
at your pinched up face.

Instead, you will pretend the messiah
will spare you for your five minute
prayer, your full-throated halleluiah,
your aching knees.

You will come away having eaten a wafer
or two, drank cheap wine, knelt before
the cross, father and holy ghost, thought jesus
should have been a little less naked.

It will make sense next week when you become
a buddhist or taoist or jew. Then you will know
how quickly each wick burns to reveal
the shiny metal bottom.



Copyright Alene Terzian. Used here by kind permission of the author.

Alene Terzian: Not a Love Poem #18: Confessions of a Neurotic

I am that girl who carries hand sanitizer,
wet wipes, Airborne tablets, who squats
in public toilets, wears socks to bed,
monitors the color of urine.

I confess I have baggage enough
for several households. I bake cakes
at 4 a.m.: marble and devil’s food,
banana bread, ginger spice, and walnut.

I vacuum until lines appear on every
surface—linear right angles on sofa
cushions, ironed bed sheets,
and de-linted pillow cases.

If I were to see a therapist, she would
identify my neuroses as vital hindrances
to healthy living. She would medicate
and reprimand, get me to make lists,

classifying each breach in normalcy
as a result of an Electra or Oedipal Complex,
a lack of behavior modification, family
neglect, abandonment, trust.


Copyright Alene Terzian. Used here by kind permission of the author.

Alene Terzian: Not a Love Poem #8

I never liked the way your hair
parted at a right angle, the glossy sheen
of your night light, or those earmarked books

pressed between white snow globes
on your dresser; they faced east where you
nervously paced and recited all twelve cranial nerves,

beginning with the hypoglossal until I was ready
to throw out your endless supply of 3 X 5s.
I was going to do it tomorrow.

But tomorrow was our anniversary, six years
of dirty dishes, iron-on t-shirts, Virgin Mary
postcards, thrift store statues, and that insufferable

velvet Elvis painting in the guest room. I should have
done it then before tomorrow demanded festivity,
and we exchanged cards with emotions we didn’t feel.

Instead, I waited for you to betray me.

It wasn’t long before I caught you in late night whispers
about arterial bleeds or mad cow disease,
contributing to a spike in selected, vegan living.

It wasn’t long until I heard you say, “Tomorrow,
after champagne toast, after friends leave, after clean up,
I will tell her.” And that night, you were propaganda,

fraudulent and intoxicated, an errant dream, a celebration
of future, miles gone, and me, curled against door,
strained to hear each word like an insistent,

uncompromising prayer; the cooed goodbye,
the packed boxes, rehearsed speech. I filmed it all:
the story of lovers leaving doorways exposed.


Copyright Alene Terzian. Used here by kind permission of the author.

Alene Terzian: The Blue Period

For my uncle, Maurice

I decorate your room with Japanese art—
lotus blossoms and cherry trees; over you,

one IV drips chemo into small veins; other lines
crisscross, and you are a Picasso, distended

and overstated; I wait each day for results.
The nurses know to tip toe around news,

use healthy words like remission, but I hear
the pity, dripping into those lines, each one

killing and saving you. I can do nothing
but hang pictures and get well cards, collage

your room in color. In one photograph, you
paint a sky on canvas, and I am two years old,

at your feet, waiting. Now, I walk the halls
in Oncology, listen outside each door—vapid

breath and beeping monitors, the steady chatter of death.
In my dreams, I write your eulogy, watch the congregation

at your wake: and there you are, the man in the photograph,
painting a sky the same shade of blue each time.


Copyright Alene Terzian. Used here by kind permission of the author.