John Kaprielian: Genocide

This happened
let no one deny it.
You took us from our homes
our schools, our churches
dragged us from our seminaries
our hospitals, doctors and patients alike.

Marched us through the square
hung or shot the men outright
drove the women and children
through the desert
to die of starvation or dehydration
after days of abuse and humiliation.

This happened.
Let no one deny it,
I have heard it from the mouths
of those who were there
and those who were left behind.

Let no one excuse it as
“casualties of war”—
pregnant women are not
hiding bombs in their wombs;
toddlers are not “enemy combatants”
Rape and mutilation are always crimes.

But year after year
you refuse to admit it
to acknowledge the acts
of your ancestors
most now dead
to admit your collective guilt
and accept some judgement
however attenuated by time
and fading memory.

This happened
let no one deny it.
Let no one forget it.

4/24/2018
©John Kaprielian

John Kaprielian: CHURCH OF THE HOLY GUNS

Someday all poems will have to be
about shootings and killing sprees
It seems that's all that happens these
days and if we do not change our ways
there will be no time to write about things
like the first light of dawn that kisses the
treetops aflame against a carmine sky or
waves that wash dancing silver
fish across shell-flecked sand

No, there will be no time for that only
blood and fear and hate and tears
the sick sweet smell of gunpowder
that hangs in the air like incense
at some perverse Church of Holy Guns
while mothers kiss cold lips and
bleach washes crimson stains
from shell-shocked floors and walls

Who needs poems about nature
and love when there are elegies
and laments to be written thoughts
and prayers to be mouthed
and promises to be made
and forgotten until the next time
which will probably be the day
after tomorrow


This poems appeared in The New Verse 

A natural history photo editor by day, John Kaprielian has been writing poetry for over 35 years. In 2012 he challenged himself to write a poem a day for a year and self-published the poems in a book 366 Poems: My Year in Verse available on Amazon. His poems have been published in The Five-Two Poetry Blog, Down in the Dirt Magazine, TheNewVerse.News, Naturewriting.com, The Blue Nib, The Blue Mountain Review, and Minute Magazine. He lives in Putnam County, NY with his wife, teenage son, and assorted pets. He is thoroughly sick of writing poems like this.

John Kaprielian's work in Minute Magazine

50+4

The first birthday I can recall
was fifty years ago today
It’s my first memory
I was four
I remember the game
“Kerplunk”
and a cake of rainbow
Jello that jiggled and swayed

But I was finally four
and that meant
I was a man
because I received
a real fishing rod
hand wound, with a
top quality DAM Quick reel

My father didn’t buy
kiddie tackle
crappy pushbutton Zebcos
and stubby molded
plastic rods

No, I was old enough
for a real reel
and a fine rod
and I knew I had
to take care of it
to be responsible
because now
I was a man

That summer I caught
a 13-inch pickerel
on a yellow worm
We nailed the head to a tree
to dry and preserve it
It stank and writhed with maggots
and 40 years later
my dog ate it

I still have my pole though
eventually the tip broke
when I was much older
and less responsible
and the reel
wore out from
overuse

But the rod has lasted
though my father is gone.
I am still a man
and so is my son.


Paeonia

I walk out the door
and the peonies
remind
me that you’re
not here

You loved how they
would burst forth
slow motion fireworks
right around
your birthday

an empty day now
without celebrations
only memories of
celebrations past

yet I find myself
struggling to remember
those past birthdays
surely full of
fishing and laughter
and probably lobsters
and gin and love

The peonies are
huge and pink
their petals brimming
with the morning rain
like eyes
full of tears.



These poems appeared in Minute Magazine. Please visit the website for the audio portions.

John Kaprielian: Selection of poems from The Blue Nib Literary Magazine

Tins of Dust
They say you should change
your spices every year or
they lose potency and aroma
but in the back of my
spice cabinet
behind the cinnamon-sticks
and whole allspice
a few old
faded Anne Page tins sit
with yellowed masking-tape
and slanted blue ball-point
Palmer-method
handwritten labels
identifying the gray
flavorless
scentless dust within

The writing is my mother’s
gone 25 years now
and the spices are
decades past their
best-by date but I can’t
throw them out or even
refill them
like cremains they are sacred
and useless
but when I look at them
I see them sitting in place
in our old pantry
right side, third shelf up
with the other spices
a ragtag mix of bottles, tins and
baby food jars
some labelled only in Armenian
others even more cryptically
in English — a dessicated fish juts
from a jar marked “Bombay Duck”
and potentially magic seeds
lie in a bottle labeled “Keens”

They entranced me then
and fling me back now to
a time when that kitchen was
crowded with people
steaming with flavors
and I would cook with my mother
father or grandmother

The tins are old
the spices ashen
but for conjuring
their potency
is undiminished



Ice Storm

The trees glisten
under the frigid sun
outside you can hear them
groan and crackle under
the weight of ice
layer upon layer laid down
drop by drop until
the burden is almost
too much to bear
but they hide their distress
behind sparkling
luminous facades
like her
radiant eyes belie
bones rimed with years of
anguish and regret
the weight of pain and
sorrow making any action
agony

When the thaw comes
the ice will leave
drop by drop
as it came and the trees
will stand tall and
quiet again but
who or what will
warm her bones and
melt her melancholy?



Spoons


Entwined we lay
contours aligned like
silverware
full length contact
body to body
breathing, pulsing
warm
intimate
but not exactly

romantic
your freezing feet wedged
between mine
bare skin against
flannel and fleece
the dog taking up
half the bed and
cat pacing the rest
clambering over us
complaining
loudly

This is middle-age
not furtive stolen kisses
and hidden passions
but flat out, solid love
perfect in imperfection
outstanding in subtlety
an impenetrable heavy
blanket of warmth

I would not trade for
youthful indiscretions
unless they were
again
with you.




These poems appeared in The Blue Nib Literary Magazine

John Kaprielian: Letters From My Father

Words were not just words
in my father’s house
they had weight
and character
and were not to be
placed on a page
thoughtlessly.

He thought about them
differently than I do
with a designer’s eye
not a poet’s
but
he loved them just as much.

Words and letters
serifs and sans
leading and kerning
bold
condensed
points and
picas

I was born into this.
my baby book was a
California job case.

When he died
his house was filled with
so many words
type books
old jobs
layouts
proofs
stats
and a bag of
wooden type
old and mildewed.
Mostly his initials –
Ws and Ks
with a smattering
of others
I guess he liked.


They used to live in his office;
a few I remember from walls or shelves
in the house where I grew up.
A tall and sleek J I always liked
rich with wood grain
sat dejected in the bottom of the bag.

I spent a good part of a day
cleaning my father’s letters
brushing and washing and oiling them
till they looked as I remembered them
so many years ago.

Despite the lack of vowels
they speak to me
murmuring stories from the past
a physical manifestation of
one of my father’s
many voices
frozen
in wood

backwards.


 John Kaprielian


This poem originally appeared in Foliate Oak Literary Magazine

John Kaprielian: SUMMER OF '77

I remember that summer
when we were so careful
watching every car wondering
if it was him, waiting to
hear who the next victim
would be or what note he
might leave for the police.
It had gone on so long
since last fall and now it was
the heat of the July and
he was still out there.
Everyone was nervous
I was 13 and terrified
my cousins lived in Queens
and we were not far from the
city line so we didn't feel
safe either in that awful
sweltering summer of
murder arson and despair
when the City had turned to
shit and there was graffiti
everywhere and in the
middle of that

the lights went out
25 hours without power a
dirty hot sweaty night people
in the streets singing, helping,
looting, hooting, dancing
sharing, shouting

but come daybreak
the City hadn't burned down
and the Son of Sam didn't
kill anyone that night.
The power came back on
and we knew that if we could
live through that we could get
that bastard and in less than
a month he was behind bars
and everyone could relax again.


John Kaprielian

This poem appeared in the The 5-2, which publishes poems about crime.