Marjorie Deiter Keyishian: About Hunger

About hunger, about desire,
what we whimper for
in the bleak reaches of night.

At dawn, before want begins,
there is thin light belonging to birds
who eat their weight in seed, in berry,
hour after lustful hour.

Tables groan under the weight
of root, leaf, and meat.
Market, stand, and oven are
quite full. And still, we want.



From Slow Runner, Finishing Line Press, 2007.

Marjorie Deiter Keyishian: Traders

Women weeded, they hoed. Sweat, the river that ran
between their breasts, poisoned their milk. Such hot sun—
such long days—making room for rye in stony
fields. Their infants left behind perished,
though their grandmothers softened the flat
cakes of rye they warmed for supper with water.

The lovely Maritza’s husband was shot down
for his watch by a friend who called for him
at midday—and, ever after, the family waited,
paying for news of him. She had five small
mouths open round her table. In spring,
she climbed the hard hills to sparse Turkish
villages to bring candy, to bring thread. Once
a Singer sewing machine went over
the pebbled roads. The donkey groaned. She,
alone, loaded that donkey and went herself
two times each year, to the Turkish village
to bring bright threads; tawny, raspberry,
and blue. Bent over looms they set up themselves,
villages of young women wove themselves
into fantastic beasts and birds, gardens
that keep alive their hungry children
no one but they are left to feed.

Marjorie Deiter Keyishian: We Didn’t Know

That our stone houses, our high raftered roofs,
were tents—shredding as we feasted and sang,
snug within, though wind keen (though wind break sleep
with those hollow sounds the ear shapes, those words
the ear invents), that hooting wind—great train—
rounding square corners of our houses, eating
them away. Where villages climbed a hill
are paths and a crumbling wall. Under earth
are shards of pots that flushed us rosy red:
steaming stews we spooned out, quarrelling all
the while. Portions were measured, you see,
and rugs (the moths ate) to be divided.

A morning like any other: rounded up,
flushed like hunted birds, we took what we ate—
nothing else. We ate the village.

In five days it was gone. The old died first.
Then the young cried in the night for food, but
there was none. Next day, they, too, were gone
away. Look! I’ve drawn those streets. These boxes
were fine timbered houses. This one was ours.
Where we live now is warmer and stronger.

Marjorie Deiter Keyishian: Sweets

In spring his mother strapped a store of candy
to the donkey’s back. They walked the hills.
Those stone roads took them to village after
village of Turkish young, shouting for barley
sugar. Louder than a cornering wind,
those children surrounded their fathers. How
they implored, mouths wet already with sweet
toffee they wanted so loud valleys ring.
Even now; the wind wants sugar candy.

That young boy who scaled (leading the beast or
following after) those lava hills knew
climbing was easy. What the others—
the children of that village never knew—
was that he did not eat candy. That sweet
taste, he bartered away so his people
ate bulghar and rice all the cold winter long.

His dying father refused fresh yogurt,
told him: “You live to feed others! Eat this.”