Jacqueline Tchakalian: To Be Beheaded, Armenia, 1915
Jacqueline Derner Tchakalian, a visual artist and a poet, lives in Woodland Hills, CA. Her poems have appeared inEclipse, So to Speak, California Quarterly, Westward 4and other publications. She was a finalist in the 2010 Tennessee Williams Literary Poetry Contest and the 2007 Conflux Press Artists Book Contest. Previously, she was a co-director of the Valley Contemporary Poets Series and for the Los Angeles Poetry Festival. Her book, The Size of Our Bed, Red Hen Press, was published in 2015.
For those who deny.
to be the beheader
is to ignore
how deeply memories
embed themselves
in tomorrow's
blood
to be beheaded
is to lose touch
source of thought
water's web
sight of blood
running away
to be an observer
on site viewing photos
watching film willing or not
is to be grateful you are not
the victim your blood
recording everything
to be remembered
victims' dried blood
must be washed
with clean hands
in memories' open
baskets of language
This poem appeared in the July 2016 issue of Frogpondia.
