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

Reading in Portland Oregon

BEYOND THE G-WORD: ARMENIAN AMERICAN 

WRITERS IN HYBRID 

THURSDAY, MARCH 28, 2019 7:00 – 8:00 PM 

ANOTHER READ THROUGH BOOKSTORE 

3932 N MISSISSIPPI AVE, PORTLAND, OR 

Armenian-American writers have long written about trauma as a means of social justice. Their resistance to oppression, including that of the current political moment, also expresses liberation. Through intersectional lenses of gender, sexual orientation, class, and race, Armenian-American poets/writers read work that addresses immigration, diaspora, exile, and war. This event centers Armenians' liminal position between East and West, and poc and white, challenging the “single story” of the Armenian genocide of 1915. With roots in Lebanon, Armenia, and Syria, these writers share works of hybridity that reflect and celebrate their diverse, multi-faceted lives.

Born in Beirut, Lebanon, Arminé Iknadossian immigrated to the United States in 1974 to escape the civil war. She earned her MFA from Antioch University. Iknadossian is the author of the chapbook United States of Love & Other Poems (2015) and All That Wasted Fruit (Main Street Rag). She teaches and writes in Long Beach, California ✸Nancy Agabian is the author of Princess Freak, a poetry/performance collection, and Me as her again: True Stories of an Armenian Daughter, a memoir. Her novel, The Fear of Large and Small Nations, was a finalist for the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially-Engaged Fiction. She teaches writing at NYU ✸Lory Bedikian’s The Book of Lamenting won the Philip Levine Prize for Poetry. She has an MFA from the University of Oregon. Her work was a finalist for the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry and for the AROHO’s Orlando Prize. She received a grant from the Money for Women/Barbara Deming Memorial fund ✸Shahé Mankerian's poetry collection, History of Forgetfulness, has been a finalist for the Bibby First Book Award, the Crab Orchard Series, the Quercus Award, and the White Pine Press Competition. He is the co-director of the L.A. Writing Project and the principal of St. Gregory Hovsepian School ✸Lola Koundakjian has authored two poetry books and read in four international poetry festivals in Quebec, Peru, Colombia and West Bank. She co-curates the Zohrab Center's poetry reading series in midtown Manhattan, and runs the Armenian Poetry Project in multiple languages and audio ✸Verónica Pamoukaghlián is a Uruguayan film producer at her company Nektar Films and a nonfiction editor for Washington´s Sutton Hart Press. Her writing has appeared in THE ARMENIAN POETRY PROJECT,  THE ACENTOS REVIEW, THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC REVIEW, PRISM, NAKED PUNCH, SENTINEL LITERARY QUARTERLY, AND THE ARMENIAN WEEKLY

Armine Iknadossian: The Locust

In Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates says that locusts were once human.

Everywhere I look there are truth seekers
in their grandfather’s green army jackets waiting
for their lives to begin. Somewhere
a light bulb is replaced, a doorknob turns,
and so many appear with nothing to say.

Like a sentence that has no future.
It is a ballast of shame, a rendering
of stillness – a movement towards God.
We feed, and feeding, grow,
and growing, swarm. But this is not the message.

This prayer is far from that,
as far as a sinner can be, as only a woman
with hunger and pride would rather hide
behind her words than give them up,
would much rather live among the poison wheat.

Previously published in Cultural Weekly

Armine Iknadossian: The Little Sinner

Undone every morning,
the devil at her knees
as her mother combs her hair,
grabs and tames the tangles.

Hundreds of wooden fingers
unravel hours of twirling
around an index finger
before bed, before dreams
of collapsing altars
and dark-haired women laughing.
By morning, a head full of spider
webs; so many evil knots to save.

She undoes her hair at bedtime,
a thing possessed – half-dead.
Unbound and spread
across the white pillow, around
her face, a black halo, a sea of little sins.

Budding, her breasts
blind kittens that will open their eyes
after many slow Sundays, unwindings,
elastic hours that stretch and shrink
like rubber bands wound around
a black mass of hair,
a fistful of worry,
a handful of worms in a dream.

Previously published in Cultural Weekly

Armene Iknadossian: Kid Napping

I have 30 minutes before the children awake,
wrinkled thumbs soaked,
eyes small with sleep. I sit
under one of California’s oldest oak trees
with the video monitors next to me.
I lift a cigarette to my lips and digress
to the smell of my mother’s hair as she lifts
me, wet with tears and urine, tangled
in soaked sheets and blankets.
Not even two, I was left
asleep. My parents walked over
to Avo’s for a round of cribbage.
20 minutes now, and the children rustle.
I hustle another cigarette out of my purse
and listen to the rescue copters circling
Millard Canyon where hikers go missing every week.
Millard, where the native Hahamog’na lived
before Portola made his messy bed there.
10 minutes, and the crow circles the nests
where my friend the Blue Jay just fed her newborns.
It is May, that mother of all months,
when the Arroyo dries up, children skip classes
and everyone leaves their windows open
for the cool breeze to steal in from the coast.
They are cooing now, but I was screaming alone
that night before they came for me, rushing in together,
eyes big with worry, huddled over me like conspirators
as they unwrapped me gently with their sorry hands.

Armine Iknadossian: Obligatory Grandmother Poem

Whether we ever knew them, whether
they held our hands or burned their bras,
somehow they silently grow into our poems
like gypsum, each one a different color and shape.

We credit them for our idiosyncrasies and diseases,
the likes of which haunt us the same way
their perfume covers everything.

I dare you to think of one pop song
written about old granny, one priceless
work of art reimagining her toothless smile.
Yes, we are sentimental fools,

but writers cringe from cliché,
and a grandmother poem is automatic death
unless she’s Norma Rae.
I pray to you please honor her another way.

Find that tourmaline necklace she passed on,
and wear it for a change. Read her old love letters
to your son, bake her a cake, give your daughter
that god-awful name so popular way back when

she had to store away her feelings like rationed sugar
during that war she suffered through. I remember too
my sweet namesake unbraiding her long dark hair
in her tidy white bedroom. All she ever did

was suffer at the hands of a spoiled husband.
All she wanted was to die, and she passed
that on to me as well. What kind of writer
would I be if I hid that from you

and only wrote poems about her Christmas cookies
and that time she taught me how to crochet?

Live from the Bowery Poetry Club: Armine Iknadossian (2)

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 Armine Iknadossian’s  reading of her poem Pennies from Heaven.

There is no time for apologies,

not time for diapers, not bloated deadbeats

like pennies shining pretty in the sun.

One penny, two, three penny, none

for you. Not for nest eggs,

not years of one-bedroom savings

for dogs in the doghouse, a dirty

doghouse where too many dogs lie.

No this is no time for sleeping dogs

to lie nor to lay down with dogs, not to wake

with fleas. This is the time to send them out back,

shoot or be bitten, put them out of this misery. C'mon

let's make a killing! A penny for a thought, yours, theirs,

secret Suisse bank accounts, Cayman Island sunstrokes.

A penny in the hand. A penny in the fist. Pennies

over eyelids. Pennies to death. Death pennies.

Dead president's (made of) pennies.

This is the time to give back the jar of pennies,

coins colored dried blood, color of collapse,

an amber Lincoln sea fit to drown.

Grab fistfuls, stuff pockets, fill up your purses.

Swallow them whole. One penny, two penny,

three. One for you and two for me.

One for tombstones in Virginia, one

for silence, two for mass hysteria.

There is no time to love the sinner, not to hate the sin,

not to let boys be boys, and boys, not to turn another cheek

while one penny is held over a flame

then carried to the skin: In God We Trust,

In We God Trust, In Trust We God. No time to trust, only time

to let meek inherit coffers, steal back what's stolen,

face the thief in the middle of your living room.

This is no time to settle, not for the smallest slice of pie,

not to divvy up leftovers and not to go home empty-handed,

not to give, not til it hurts, not till you're bleeding pennies.

One penny, two penny, three penny, more.

One for you, and two for me, one for you again. Don't apologize,

take it, don't stay silent for the dogs. Take it, don't love

the sinner, take it, run, like hell take it, laugh,

take it, it hurts, take it all the way to the bank,

take it all the way to heaven.

Live from the Bowery Poetry Club: Armine Iknadossian

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 Armine Iknadossian’s introduction and reading of her poem Mourning Paper.

Mourning Paper

After a night of weeping
I misread simple words,
mistake dust for lust, overlook
the bloated belly of the letter d.
This morning, every stroke of the alphabet 
cringes or folds, hides itself
behind its bitter alter ego.
Today, profession is possession 
as two s's merge, one selfishly 
consuming the other. Restful inevitably turns resentful.
And love is lose,
a consonant for a consonant, 
an eye for an eye.Satin turns into stain, a dyslexic
anagram, a failed romance. 
I want to say more than anything
that kiss does not hiss,
that k's outstretched hand is not rejected.

Armine Iknadossian: California Love Poem

10/6/09 9:05 PM

The sun has an orgasm across the valley

as Pasadena opens up in front of me,

the Suicide Bridge pushing an arm out

of green sleeves, orange blossoms  keening

after a mid-spring heatwave,

the Rose Bowl yawning in a ravine.

It is not enough to love the one you love,

to drive towards the ocean just to fall

into bed with them, then return home

alone, drowsy from no sleep and sex in a strange bed,

the 101 stretching herself East towards

black rocks and tarantulas of Nevada.

Down towards the unilateral mirage of water,

the Salton Sea groans in her deadwood  hammock.

On a map, California looks like she’s hugging the continent

and Nevada is leaning in for a deep kiss.

She is tentative, he is a sharp-tongued,

diamond-studded menace, kissing her

and at the same time, pushing her into the ocean.

Armine Iknadossian: Beirut Blues

Remember the curtains Mother?
How they wrapped their arms
around the sofa on windy days,

how the blue-tongued ocean below our window
licked the painted toes of French tourists in bikinis?

Remember tea parties on the balcony,
the red dress you sewed for me
right out of the latest issue of Burda magazine?

And then the missile's cry,
how its whiny trajectory fooled us

as it lit up the summer sky during rooftop dinners.
They weren't for us, were they?

But that day we hid behind the sofa,
you and I, they were for us that day,
the day we ran down the stairs

to the damp and dim below,
down where death could not reach

and the breath of life was quick at our feet.
I remember more,
but let's talk instead about

the dancing curtains, the wide mouthed sea,
porcelain tea cups and Father coming home.


This poem has appeared in the website Poets Against War.

Armine Iknadossian: KITCHEN IN PASADENA

Mother is stirring soup.
Says she smells the Mediterranean.

A Monarch butterfly appears from behind the rack
on her way to Mexico or San Simeon.

Glides from faucet to shoulder to ladle.
Together, they listen to the bubbling of the ocean.


This poem has appeared on Groong and is reproduced here by kind permission of the author.

Armine Iknadossian: Lost Poem

I looked for you
under the barstool
underneath my wine glass
you were mine for one half hour

stolen by an oil-streaked man
in an olive-colored suit
pinky ring winking
who molested you with his eyes

extracted you from the wedge of my pocket
smoothed you out
decoded you in the alley
outlaw rhythm of my beating eyelashes

my bracelet trailed your shapely limbs
as I transcribed you from the smoky air
found you floating above the candles
let you fall out of your gown

loser to the noise and clatter we are summoned
to grace
amidst flowering pots

you are the wink of an eye at midnight
the end of a bumpy road is home at dusk
the balmy air a shawl around your neck
the streets that catered to your history
the zipping of crickets
the enchantment of the invisible green behind your house
this is your home
where skin sticks to skin sticks to everything
black ovals on paper with curvy legs
so the street lamp glows
and black is the color of night
so you are free here
the railroad tracks reveal your moveable nature
the sun rises in the hour of red
and fantasy is a sliver of lemon sugared
knuckles are guardians of hands
living under bridges of skin
the vigilante vein patrol that screams impact to a wall
a hole in the afterbirth of jazz
in the horn blows of the mad
when your eyes left stains on your cheeks
and necks were meant for kissing
the rope is knotted
a footstool is a sad friend realized


Copyright Armine Iknadossian. Used here by kind permission of the author.

Armine Iknadossian: Love Poem

A black comb of words
to hold in your hand,
a semantic romance, a roman à clef,
a myth to deconstruct.

This poem you want
needs a bit of irony, needs to bleed
from the ears. There are many stones
to haul from the quarry, to lay before your feet.
Unless you want something spoon fed.

No, you want lines that swoon
in front of your lashes
like a thousand oars dipping into the sea.
This poem must remove all your splinters

while standing on its head,
must guide your eyes,
bluer than the grottos of Capri,
down its narrow alleys.
Trust that it won’t cut you open. Yes,

this is like gross anatomy.
I am naming all my inhibitions
while you peer over my shoulder,
one by one I am handing you my bones.



Copyright Armine Iknadossian.
Used here by kind permission of the author.

Armine Iknadossian: If Joan of Arc Was Still Alive

She would be sitting by the Mediterranean
at sundown, the sky as red as Campari,
knitting, or maybe sharpening her cutlery

on a large stone. She would talk to the sea,
its curling fingers of foam, its fists of water
like a woman climbing out of ash and bone.

In the evenings she would eat black olives
as she watched the sea, that burning beast.
She’d spit out each pit and examine the seeds

for clots of dried blood, tiny tumors, a set of bloody teeth.

Copyright Armine Iknadossian.
Used here by kind permission of the author.

Armine Iknadossian: Too Warm to Write a Love Poem

I can hear the words
in the whirring of the fan
or the leaf blower five houses down.

There’s a word: interior
and then another word: fracture
before I sigh and shift in my chair.

When will I write
to reveal my wounds
as if unveiling pieces of art?

I move the fan closer.
It insists on sacrifice and eyelash
but all those poems are taken.

I go to the kitchen.
It is too warm
to write a love poem.

The tea kettle sings like Tosca
before she hurls herself
off the rampart.


Copyright Armine Iknadossian.
Used here by kind permission of the author.

Armine Iknadossian: Jerusalem Syndrome

like the others she only comes here
not Lourdes not Montserrat
thinks she’s the Prophetess of the Olive Tree
wanders deserts dressed in hotel bed sheets
crouches at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher
shaves all body hair and cuts her nails
stays outdoors to feed off the sun and the moon
washes her vagina at sunup and sundown
chants loudly for humanity to become calmer purer
is arrested for kicking people near the church
and when police question her she raises her arms
holds up the heavens as if welcoming the Messiah

Copyright Armine Iknadossian.
Used here by kind permission of the author.

Armine Iknadossian: Lost

in the cotton-mouthed morning
a red-crowned crane raises its beak,
watches the grey sky, recovers
from the miles left behind in the Far East

alone in the misty field of lilac,
today could be his last.
what wind could carry him home?
what promise of tomorrow?

Copyright Armine Iknadossian.
Used here by kind permission of the author.

Introducing Armine Iknadossian

Armine Iknadossian lives in Glendale, California and teaches high school English. She received her BA from UCLA and an MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles. She has just completed her first manuscript, Gnosis. Publications include Pasadena City College‘s Inscape, UCLA’s Wisteria, Cal State Northridge’s Edges, Lounge Lit: An Anthology of Poetry and Fiction by the Writers of Literati Cocktail and Rhapsodomancy and zaum.

“The Return” was a finalist in Backwards City Review’s annual poetry contest. “March Eulogy”, winner of Prose Poems at Work, and “Bodies of Water”, a featured poem of the month, can be viewed at www.writersatwork.com. Her poetry can also be viewed on line at www.litparlor.com, www.poeticdivesity.org, and, www.poetsagainstwar.org.

An interview with poet Eloise Klein Healy will be featured at www.mediacakemagazine.com this summer.