Remote 3-Hour Workshop: Lory Bedikian: The Ode

 Lory Bedikian, a long time poet, award winner and APP collaborator will be teaching a virtual class on Thursday, November 16, 12-3pm ET   at Poets House. 

The Book of Lamenting
by Lory Bedikian

begins on edges of highways

where the sun raises its swollen belly,
grasses outgrow themselves,
vineyards wither their nerves.

The sun cracks the dashboard,
slithers between rows of eucalyptus, juniper,
rolls along the wheels of trucks.

Past crows that caw, pod atop railroad crossings,
the engine cranks its monotonous pulse, distracts me
from posted signs, the yellow snake that guides me along.

This is where I find reasons to question the living,

my father’s face held
in his hands, his brows etched
in the stained glass of the missions,

my mother’s sacrifice dwelling
in deserted turnpikes, her eyes
gazing from overgrown orchards.

Trees disappear. Dried brush crumbles
into camel’s fur. In the distance, no horizon,
but tumbleweed large as sheep.

This is where I am when the world has closed its ears,

alongside rusted tractors, abandoned fruit stands,
roaming for hours, nothing but barbed-wire fences,
nothing but the smells of harvest and gasoline.

The road matters more than the earth,
more than those on the road, it turns
into a spine, ladder of teeth and bone.

In the passenger seat, my grandmother’s ghost
holds a palm full of seeds, scatters them
skyward for the crows to eat.

All of it behind us now. She tells me
not to tangle my nerves, not to stop
the creed of the open road—

nothing that runs can stay the same.


Copyright © 2011 Lory Bedikian. This poem originally appeared in The Book of Lamenting (Anhinga Press, 2011). Used with permission of the author.

Lory Bedikian: On the Way to Oshagan featured in "On Being"

Click here to hear an audio clip of this reading by Pádraig Ó Tuama.

“I stop the car, cross the dirt road
to see what the old woman’s selling.
Hoping for a cold drink, an extra
postcard to write this evening, I find
her tucked behind a table, under a tarp,
fly swatters swaying above her head.
Stacks of Marlboro boxes, packs of gum
are the only things I recognize among
the odd Russian, Armenian labels.
She must not hear me, because she keeps
rolling a square of newspaper into a cone,
fills it with roasted sunflower seeds.
I ask for one, saying ‘meg hahd hahjees,’
fumbling to find a dram among my dollars.

Her eyes, the color of two almonds
rise for only a moment before she asks
with a low, coarse, parrot-voice
if I like America, if I’m married and where
exactly is this place called ‘Glendale?’
With an awkward smile I drop indifferent
answers for her, like coins in the palm.
Until this exchange I had convinced myself
that I do not look like a tourist. After all, having
an ancestral name, firm family tree, the language
ironed to my tongue since the day I was born,
how could I be just another Amerigatzi? I say
this to myself, though I’m the one with the walking
shoes, the camera, the plaid-patterned pants.

She interrupts my thoughts with ‘Welcome
to Armenia. Please take these seeds for free.’
When I extend the money, I notice her face
shrinks in the afternoon light. Back in Los Angeles
I would have insisted to pay. But with this unexpected
visit I simply remembered how I was raised,
before the textbooks, the corporate cubicles,
before I learned to get fashion magazine
haircuts, attend culturally sponsored events.
I hear my parents say, ‘Love this seven-member family
all your days and nights, learn to take every offering
with grace, no matter the given size.’
I bow my head, say thank you. She insists
it’s nothing, asks that I come back soon.

Forgetting why it was I stopped at all,
I walk back across the dirt, cracking
one open. Its shell tastes of the same
salted seeds tucked by my grandmother
into coat pockets for evening walks.
Like a small communion, I contemplate
the seed with my tongue and swallow.
I almost turn to wave, but get back
in the car. For miles around, there is nothing
but land I follow on the map.
There is nothing but this old woman
and her convenience stand
made of brick and woodon the edge of a beaten road.”

 

From The Book of Lamenting

Lory Bedikian: PANDEMIC TALLY: AT ODDS WITH MAY

Click here for an audio clip of the poem. 

Apologies, mother, that you had no funeral. It was too close

to call the priest. Shovel of dirt. Flowers. Strangers with masks

in charge of lowering the coffin. Cyber condolences. Incense.

My sons face the screens. My sons face a future without most

of the people I loved. The teacher calls on those who are fast,

fed what they want for lunch. My sons clench their teeth.

All the funding has gone to the birds. Beautiful creatures, gleaming

feathers, whose babies have their feathers combed by aardvarks

and stool pigeons. These fledgelings always get to bed on time.

Postpone the check-up, the procedure, the poetry of mourning,

there’s a pandemonium of voices coming from a white tower

full of more fowl. Where are they all coming from?

Bombs. Children and mothers die together. They didn’t get

a chance to contemplate as they did on school days. The forests

destroyed. Their husbands already buried. Conveyer belt methods.

I don’t want to talk about kin, kinship or cognac. It always ends

with maps, my father’s voice, my ancestors kneeling by graves.

I want everyone to stand up to choir it out. Even the dead.

There is no such thing as writer’s block. There is no such thing

as writer’s block. (Their favorite pencil was left in their usual café,

while the chandelier doesn’t give its typical, shrewd light).

Prison. In prison because they always wrote, even when they were

told that you are pissing off the guy in charge. The guy in charge,

when he was a boy they should have given him ripe apricots, pencils.

A reference to Donna Summer doesn’t seem to fit the tapestry. Don’t

see why not. Donna Summer lived in Los Angeles, she sang, ignited,

died. People still play her songs on the corner of Hollywood and Vine.

Dad, did you find Mom? Before she died she wanted to hear Elvis Presley

sing I Can’t Help Falling in Love With You, but I don’t know if that ever

was taken care of. She never told me if she missed you.

An antimicrobial resistant infection is not an easy thing to take care of

when almost everything is limited, when almost everyone seems

daunting with their masks and no masks and deranged attitudes.

I hear Grant Green’s Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child

while I wash another sink full of greens. Sometimes motherhood

is a well without rope or bucket. Even the blue sky still hunkers down.

Lory Bedikian

Published in Adroit Journal

LORY BEDIKIAN: BEFORE THE ELEGY, SPEAK TO HER

Click here for an audio clip of the poem. 

Zevart, before you decide to go

anywhere, let me construct a ship of books,

sailable & plenty, free of disease & car rides,

a ship anchored to everything & nothing,

Zevart of my birth, a name I will not

simplify for them. Let them say it.

Zevart. Zevart of rose petal jam & calluses,

your mother, a desert walk, her mother

hovering above sheep’s brain stew,

Zevart. Zevart. All I have left

of my first blurred sight. All that’s

left of my own name, its song —

leave now & I won’t find the impossible

argument of daybreak. Depart if you want,

but the phone will keep ringing.

Voice of Zevart. Body of Zevart.

Bathing Zevart. The weight of your body

on my arm, as if holding a country.

May you never read this, never learn

what I’ve done. A tradition never yours

this scrawled before it should be, your name

a drum, the only part I’ll borrow, and so,

Zevart. The rest can stay in their glass

cases. Remember how our folktales began?

Gar oo chee gar. Once there was and was not

a life we knew full of produce & price

tags, tell me again before you go there,

how you & one brother took James Dean

to be a god. Aleppo tired of you.

Your mother never done in the kitchen.

What is it now that I’m doing?

Did I actually think this would preserve you?

How can I close this, when a train could take you

through a tunnel, a bag of dates & walnuts

on your lap, sudden darkness while you chew,

snickering at what you were never taught.

What did I promise? Oh, yes. This.

Zevart. Zevart. Zevart.

Lory Bedikian

Published in Adroit Journal

Lory Bedikian's contribution to our Call for Poems on the topic of epidemics, illness, medicine, death and healing

Lory Bedikian of Tujunga, CA, USA, has shared these poems  APP thanks her.

Sestina, as my mother cooks

by Lory Bedikian


I tell her it’s a problem of the nerve.
She doesn’t look up, but eases a scar
on each small olive, making room
for the marinade to soak in. Not one eye
blinks as she does this. Like before, I’m pretty
sure that this is my cue to leave.

But I think back, when she had to leave
Aleppo with my father, each good-bye plucking a nerve,
hitting notes against her chest—quite pretty
for a plainly dressed Protestant. Like a scar
they mark the bible with this date. One eye
on the future, they fly and find a one-room

apartment in New York. Now, my mother acts as if this room
holds only her. She mumbles there’s nothing wrong, just leave
the past alone and you’ll be fine. I lunge my twitching eye
toward her. But she doesn’t have the nerve
to look. I wonder how she handles the brush of scar
below her abdomen, where I entered the world, pretty

different than most. She asks me to put on something pretty
for once. The L.A. noon heat rises. I pace the room
thinking of how to tell this woman of the scar
tissue the doctor found; how I tried to leave
the office smiling, grateful it wasn’t worse, just a nerve
disorder, its radar placed in the sphere of an eye.

After so many years, she still gives me the eye
over. What I say next is anything but pretty:
Has she ever thought each cell, each nerve
of my body is conspiring in rebellion to the room
we’ve always held between us? She says she must leave
for work, she’s late. My fingers shake. I say another scar

will form from this—like each scar
you brought across the Atlantic. I feel as small as the eye
of a needle. A cutting board, an empty sink is what we leave
behind us. She walks ahead, down the hall. I stop. Pretty
soon she’ll reappear. In this house I have no room
left, so I grab my keys, knowing it’s enough that I’ve struck this nerve.

This is how she survives, making sure to leave the house looking pretty.
Not one scar visible to the eye. She doesn’t question this world, how it has
the nerve to move us from room to room, so far from where we started.

This poem was published in The Best American Poetry 2019 edition.


Partial Tubectomy Revisited

             There are many reasons why a woman falls
      to the floor. An optimist surely imagines
lovemaking, or the uncontrollable writhing

             of modern dance that sweeps across the stage,
      not a harsh plunge onto hardwood, the tumble
so sudden one thinks the old furniture

             has slipped, crashed, cracked the tile.
      Let’s work backward. She is lying there
screaming her husband’s name. The right

             tube gave up, gave out
      like an old rubber tire does after much
wear. All it needed was a nail. All it took

             was an embryo to get stuck along its path,
      the pressure unbearable, and the day before
no increased human chorionic gonadotropin,

             though twenty days of bleeding while
      going back and forth to the hardware store
to mend the fixer-upper, same age as her,

             fallen siding, withered eaves,
      should have been the obvious sign.
So, she is lying there and the husband

             rushes her to the emergency room
      and she does not die as the doctor
said she would have had she not signed

             the paperwork. When she wakes
      she discovers the tube is gone,
couldn’t be saved. On the television

             an old black and white with wagons,
      women in ankle-length skirts, poke
bonnets almost like a trap for hair,

             boots full of dust, their hands rough
      as pumice stone. And if these
settlers fell to the floor, she wonders,

             who would come, who would hear them
      and realize those long aprons had become
flags fluttering at the cabin door?

This poem originally appeared in Tin House, Fall 2018.

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

Lory Bedikian's upcoming reading at Claremont Libray, Claremont, California

Lory Bedikian to participate in a A Celebration of Feminist Poets Who Span a Generation

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/a-celebration-of-feminist-poets-who-span-a-generation-tickets-24500507678

A Celebration of Feminist Poets Who Span a Generation

On Saturday, May 7th, Red Hen Press and the Women’s Center of Los Angeles will hold a benefit reading - A Celebration of Feminist Poets Who Span a Generation – From the 1960's to Present Day featuring renown feminist poets Judy Grahn and Eloise Klein Healy in conversation with up-and-coming contemporary feminist poets Lory Bedikian, Lillian-Yvonne Bertram, Adrienne Christiansen, Nicelle Davis, and Jenny Factor.

The event will begin with a champagne reception at 2 p.m. at the Feminist Majority Foundation/Ms. Magazine (433 S Beverly Dr, Beverly Hills, CA 90212). Tickets are available in advance for $16.00 for adults, $12.00 for students and seniors, and for $25.00 at the door. This benefit is in support Red Hen Press and WCLA - two nonprofit organizations dedicated to the shared values, voices, legacy, and impact of women writers. 

Free book, champagne, and hors d'oeuvres included with ticket.

Reader Bios:

Judy Grahn is teacher, activist and award winning author of The Common Woman Poems, Edward the Dyke, A Simple Revolution: the Making of an Activist Poet and many more. Some of her recent publications include Love Belongs to Those Who Do the Feeling and The Judy Grahn Reader. Her forthcoming (and 14th) book is Hanging On Our Own Bones. She was a member of the Gay Women’s Liberation Group, the first lesbian-feminist collective on the West Coast, founded in 1969 which established the first women’s bookstore, A Woman’s Place, as well as the first all-woman press, the Woman’s Press Collective. Ms. Grahn earned her PhD from the California Institute of Integral Studies.  Her honors include a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, an American Book Review Award, an American Book Award, an American Library Award, and a Founding Foremothers of Women’s Spirituality Award. Since 1997 Publishing Triangle, after awarding Grahn a Lifetime Achievement Award in Lesbian Letters, has issued an annual Judy Grahn Nonfiction Award. Today, Ms. Grahn lives in California and teaches women's mythology and ancient literature, Metaformic Consciousness (a philosophy created by Grahn), and Uncommon Kinship - a course that uses theories from her Metaformic philosophy which traces the roots of culture back to ancient menstrual rights at the California Institute for Integral Studies, the New College of California, and the Institute for Transpersonal Psychology.

Eloise Klein Healy the first Poet Laureate of Los Angeles is professor emerita at Antioch University Los Angeles and the co-founder of Eco-Arts. Her collection of poems, Passing, was a finalist for the 2003 Lambda Literary Awards in Poetry and the Audre Lorde Award from The. Healy has also received the Grand Prize of the Los Angeles Poetry Festival and has received six Pushcart nominations. She was involved in the Woman's Building, the well known West Coast feminist cultural center, throughout the 1970s and 1980s in various capacities including as a teacher and a member of the Board of Directors. Healy was instrumental in directing the women's studies program at Cal State Northridge, started the MFA program in creative writing at Antioch University and founded Arktoi Books, an imprint of Red Hen Press.

Lory Bedikian’s The Book of Lamenting was awarded the 2010 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry. Bedikian received her BA from UCLA with an emphasis in Creative Writing and Poetry where she was twice nominated for the Ina Coolbrith Memorial Prize in Poetry. Her poems have been published in the Connecticut Review, Portland Review,Poetry International, Poet Lore and Heliotrope among other journals and have been included in Blue Arc West: An Anthology of California Poets. And, Poets & Writers magazine chose her work as a finalist for the 2010 California Writers Exchange Award. She lives and teaches poetry workshops in Los Angeles.

Lillian-Yvonne Bertram is one-sixth of the poetry collective, Line Assembly and in 2014, recipient of an NEA Creative Writing Poetry Fellowship. Her chapbook cutthroat glamours (2013) won the Phantom Press chapbook contest and her first full-length book, But a Storm is Blowing From Paradise (Red Hen Press, 2012), was selected by Claudia Rankine as the 2010 Benjamin Saltman Award winner and was a 2013 poetry nominee for the Hurston/Wright Foundation Legacy Award for outstanding works of literature published by people of African descent. Her second book, a slice from the cake made of air,was released this spring from Red Hen Press; her third book, personal science, is forthcoming from Tupelo Press. 

Nicelle Davis is a California poet, collaborator, and performance artist. Her books poetry includes Becoming Judas, Circe, and In the Circus of You. Her fourth book of poems, The Walled Wife,was released by Red Hen Press this spring. Davis’ work has been published by The Beloit Poetry Journal, The New York Quarterly, PANK, SLAB Magazine, and others. Davis is the editor-at-large of The Los Angeles Review and was the recipient of the 2013 AROHO retreat 9 3/4 Fellowship. She currently teaches at Paraclete and with the Red Hen Press WITS program.

Jenny Factor earned a BA in anthropology at Harvard University, where she studied with Seamus Heaney, and an MFA in literature and poetry at Bennington College. Her book the Unraveling at the Name won the 2002 Hayden Carruth Award and her poems have been featured in numerous anthologies, including The Best American Erotic Poems, Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry, and The Poet’s Child. Factor lives in San Marino, California and has worked as a freelance writer, editor and taught at Antioch University, Los Angeles.

Upcoming reading in Pasadena, California

Lory Bedikian
author of The Book of Lamenting
winner of the 2010 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry

&

William Archila
author of The Art of Exile and newly released The Gravedigger's Archaeology
winner of the 2015 Letras Latinas/Red Hen Press Poetry Prize

will be reading at Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena, California

on Saturday, June 20th at 3 p.m.


Introduction by Prof. Michael Datcher

Vroman's Bookstore
695 E. Colorado Blvd
Pasadena, CA 91101
626-449-5320
(Fax) 626-792-7308
email@vromansbookstore.com

Lory Bedikian reading from her book

Click to hear Lory Bedikian introducing her work and reading from her book.

Lory Bedikian: Prayer for My Immigrant Relatives

While they wait in long lines, legs shifting,

fingers growing tired of holding handrails,
pages of paperwork, give them patience.
Help them to recall the cobalt Mediterranean
or the green valleys full of vineyards and sheep.
When peoples’ words resemble the buzz
of beehives, help them to hear the music
of home, sung from balconies overflowing
with woven rugs and bundled vegetables.
At night, when the worry beads are held
in one palm and a cigarette lit in the other,
give them the memory of their first step
onto solid land, after much ocean, air and clouds,
remind them of the phone call back home saying,
We arrived. Yes, thank God we made it, we are here.

Lory Bedikian: Father Picking Grapes, Armenia, 1997

We watch from the Moscovich

as he steps into the ditch,
our driver begging him to hurry.

These grapes are from Hayasdan
he says, as he steps up to the car,
plucks one for each of us.

Let the owner complain. Let him
knock me down. I have waited
my entire life to pick these grapes.

He sings a familiar, dark cluster
of notes in the dry October air.
The hills, now camels at dusk, stare

at swallows swimming above,
look to the dusty road
that meets the horizon. As if someone

approaches, he listens, almost
waits for a relation, long lost,
to walk toward this remote village,

to find him here with his palms full of harvest,
full of vines that have waited for his return.

Lory Bedikian: Self-Portrait with Crane

On road trips, no coastal fog rolling in
Brings me the sea gull or sandpiper

shifting from water to sky,
but the common Armenian crane

who treks across the Atlantic,
breaks through California clouds, 

haunts the laurels, the eucalyptus,
a message tucked in its beak.

In riffs strummed on midwestern guitars,
I can hear the duduk hound me 

with its drone of apricot wood,
piping a monotone dirge, driven

like the tumbleweed. In New Mexico,
each flute player’s eyes turns 

into the pomegranate seed.
Going east should bring foliage

but I see the blue eye in trees.
For days, New England’s sediment 

drops into riverbeds, bends
into Gorky’s brush strokes.

No relief. Ghosts float west
from Ellis Island, crosses tattooed 

on their forearms, worry beads
pebbled in their grip. Even as I watch

the world series, a fly ball
turns back into the crane.

Originally published: Spring 2008 in Euphony prose and poetry at the University of Chicago

Lory Bedikian featured in Southern California poetry site

Click here to watch the poet Lory Bedikian read from her recent award winning book, "The Book of Lamenting"

Lory Bedikian's first book

Poet Lory Bedikian's first book, The Book of Lamenting, winner of the 2010 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry, is now available in limited release through Anhinga Press.

Cover: Ephraim Rubenstein, "Still Life with Burned Books"

To order:http://www.anhinga.org/books/book_info.cfm?title=Book%20of%20Lamenting

Lory Bedikian wins Levine Prize in Poetry

Congratulations to LORY BEDIKIAN


Lola Koundakjian
Armenian Poetry Project

Poetry Workshop at St. Peter Armenian Church

For National Poetry Month —the month of April— In His Shoes will be offering poetry workshops led by Lory Bedikian for Seniors and Teens! The worskhops will take place at the St. Peter Armenian Church and Youth Ministries Center in Glendale, California.

If you are a senior or teen, this is an opportunity to come and express yourself. There is no experience necessary and all are welcome. You don't have to know anything about poetry to attend or participate! You may write in any language you're most comfortable with, although workshops will generally be in English. (Lory speaks Armenian, so if need be, the workshops can be bilingual).

If you aren't a senior or teen, please consider accompanying or encouraging a parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle, younger brother, sister or any loved one or community member you know who would enjoy this type of event. It is such a wonderful gesture or gift to let our seniors and teens know that we value their voices and that their creative pursuits matter!

Workshops are free. Two senior workshops will take place in the daytime while two teen workshops are scheduled after school. Please click on the links to open the flyers for details:Seniors Poetry Workshop and Teen Poetry Workshop.  This information is also available on the In His Shoes calendar.

Whether you are attending the senior workshops or teen workshops, you are encouraged to attend both days so that you can try some of the at-home writing exercises Lory will be giving you.

Thank you and hope to see you there! Please feel free to pass this along to any one you know who may be interested.

For more information and/or to reserve your space, please contact Lory Bedikian directly at LBediki@aol.com.

Lory Bedikian: Beyond the mouth

Click here for the audio clip Beyond the mouth read by the author Lory Bedikian.

On the back of every tongue in my family
there is a dove that lives and dies.

At night when my aunts and uncles sleep
the birds comb their feathers, sharpen beaks.

They are carriers, not only of the olive
branch, but the rest of our histories too.

As from the ark, we came in twos
with tired eyes from Lebanon, Syria,

the outskirts of Armenia and anywhere
where safety said its final prayers and died.

Like every simile ever written, the doves
or our tongues are tired and misread.

Dinners begin with mounds of bread, piled
dialogues between the older men.

Near our dark throats, the quiet
birds lurk to watch meals descend,

take phrases that didn’t reach
the truth and spin them into nests.

Now and then, we spit them out in shapes
of seeds, olive pits, or spines of fish.

The men never watch what enters past
the teeth, what leaves their moving lips,

and the doves know this. The women shut
their mouths when they don’t approve

of the squawking laughs. There is a saying
(or at least there should be) that if one doesn’t

believe what is said or true, they can ask
the dove on the back of the tongue

and it will chirp the ugliness or the pitted
truth, of how we choke on what we hide.




“Beyond the mouth” was first published in Timberline.


Par delà la bouche

Derrière chaque langue dans ma famille
Il y a une colombe qui vit et meurt.

La nuit, lorsque dorment mes oncles et tantes
Les oiseaux lissent leurs pennes, aiguisent leurs becs.

Les messagers, non seulement du rameau
D'olivier, mais aussi de ce qui reste de nos histoires.

Telle cette arche, où à deux nous sommes venus
Les yeux las, du Liban, de Syrie,

Des lointaines contrées d'Arménie et partout
Où la sécurité a dit ses dernières prières et a disparu.

Comme toute comparaison déjà écrite, les colombes
ou nos langues sont lasses et faussées.

Les dîners commencent par des monceaux de pain, des piles
De dialogues qu'échangent les anciens.

Près de nos gorges sombres, en silence
Les oiseaux sont tapis pour voir tomber la nourriture,

S'emparer des expressions hors d'atteinte de
La vérité, les tissant pour en faire des nids.

De temps à autre, nous les crachons en forme
De graines, de noyaux d'olives ou d'arêtes de poisson.

Les hommes ne voient jamais ce qui passe au-delà
Des dents, ce qui s’éloigne de leurs lèvres mouvantes,

Et les colombes savent cela. Les femmes ferment
La bouche lorsqu'elles désapprouvent

Les rires braillards. Un dicton
(du moins, il devrait exister) dit que si l'on ne

croit pas ce qui est dit ou vrai, ils peuvent demander
à la colombe derrière la langue

alors elle gazouillera la laideur ou la vérité
trouée, comment nous étouffons ce que nous cachons.

Lory Bedikian: Night in Lebanon

Click here for the audio clip Night in Lebanon read by the author Lory Bedikian.

The youngest boy, with his ulcer,
sleeps. His lower lip pulsates, a small fish
breathing. A bed of torn pillows, cradles four
of them, two brothers, two sisters—
curved, quiet on the living room floor.
Buzzing, the open window has its mouth full
of street lights, mosquitoes, those who stay
awake. Peeled paint on the ceiling, the door

sheds the skin it wore through
a drawn-out, twenty-year civil war.
The parents sleep in a room full of faith
hammered to the walls. Posing, a copper
cross, its inscription in Armenian asks
for blessings of God upon this home.
Through the mother’s sleeping lips a prayer
slips, rises, drifts and hovers above the boy

who dreams: he’s a grown man
spinning yarn around their home
until it’s as thick as a bombshell.
Then, cane in hand, walking through a cedar
grove, he drops a string of worry
beads into a well. Cracking a pumpkin
seed open with his teeth, he tastes
childhood in each closed casing.

In the morning, a thin scroll
of bread filled with tomato paste, oil, mint
will start the hurried day. But now, he sleeps
as he did the day he was born. Stillness
enters his lip, his mouth finally rests,
breathing as he will when his is older
than this war whose finger has carved a scar
in him, the size of an eye that will not close.



"Night in Lebanon" appeared in the Crab Orchard Review and was reprinted in Blue Arc West: An Anthology of California Poets. It has also appeared in Poets Against War.

Nuit au Liban


Le plus jeune, avec son ulcère,
dort. Sa lèvre inférieure palpite, tel un petit poisson
qui respire. Le lit aux oreillers déchirés berce
les quatre, deux frères, deux sœurs –
pelotonnés, calmes sur le sol du salon.
Bourdonnante, la fenêtre ouverte et sa gueule emplie
des lumières de la ville, de moustiques, de ceux qui sont
éveillés. Peinture écaillée au plafond, la porte

se défait de la peau qui fut sienne durant
une interminable guerre civile, de vingt ans.
Les parents dorment dans une pièce emplie d’une foi
clouée aux murs. Apposée, une croix
de cuivre, son inscription en arménien appelle
la bénédiction de Dieu sur cette maison.
Des lèvres de la mère endormie une prière
se glisse, s’élève, dérive et volète autour du garçon

qui rêve : il est cet homme adulte
tissant un fil autour de leur maison
jusqu’à ce qu’il ait l’épaisseur d’un obus.
Puis, un bâton en main, traversant un bosquet
de cèdres, il jette un komboloï à perles
dans un puits. Fendant une graine
de citrouille avec ses dents, il éprouve
son enfance dans chaque enveloppe close. 

Au matin, une fine tranche
de pain emplie de jus de tomate, d’huile, de menthe
ouvrira le jour qui presse. Pour l’heure, il dort
comme il le faisait à sa naissance. L’immobilité
gagne ses lèvres, sa bouche enfin se repose,
respirant comme il le fera quand son souffle est plus ancien
que cette guerre dont le doigt a découpé une cicatrice
en lui, grosseur d’un œil qui ne se referme pas. 

Adaptation : Georges Festa - 02.2011

Gregory Djanikian reading at the Glendale Public Library in March 2008

Gregory Djanikian will be in California to read from his new
collection of poetry, So I Will Till The Ground, at the Glendale Public
Library, 222 East Harvard Street, Glendale, CA, on Monday, March 10.

He will be introduced by fellow poet Lory Bedikian.

Click on the thumbnail below to expand and print the flyer.