Such a meticulous child,
it wasn't always easy for me
to watch my grandmother cook.
She used her hands for measuring cups,
her fingers as tablespoons.
Close enough, she'd say
while she worked over the pots and cauldrons
that steamed with fasoolya, pohrov kufta,
dolma... She used garlic when she was happy,
and she was happy often.
She baked a lot, too.
Whenever I'd come over she'd stuff
flour-fingered walnuts in my mouth
and talk while I couldn't.
Like so many old-country cooks
she cleaned her kitchen through use.
The corners and back cupboards lay kittied
and abandoned, while the working parts
were wiped at least daily.
I gauged her aging
by the slow encroachment upon her kitchen.
I watched her slow, stoop, and finally sit
in her green and stainless wheelchair.
The time I discovered her at the stove fenced
in an aluminum walker, I stole
down the long empty hall of her deafness,
and out.
When she died,
the only part of her kitchen that was clean
was the right-front burner on her gas stove.
While my uncles worked in other rooms,
my father and I took the kitchen --
two pools of cleanliness spreading outward.
We stopped as the people began to arrive.
That'll have to do, my father said, sliding
the damp dish towel from his shoulder.
Close enough, I thought, and left
for the living and the mourners.
This poem is part of the volume entitled "The Eating of Names", published by Ashod Press, 1983. It is reprinted here by kind permission of the author.
His entire body is a stenciled crate
falling from the morning skies of New England,
of frost like a small white bird climbing
the panes cut with isosceles light,
of pumpkins stealing from the star-dark porch
in search of vines,
but it isn't so.
This is about a woman who paints herself red
and goes out to inflict
upon herself the onus of our attention.
It's about standing here
while she, flustered but adamant,
circles the yard collecting
what she can manage of departure.
And it's about how much I love this loneliness,
heavy as the weight of fallen leaves
and slow as the slow of sap that huddles
towards the vague bus constant promise of the dark.
This poem is part of the volume entitled "The Eating of Names", published by Ashod Press, 1983. It is reprinted here by kind permission of the author.
Mike Akillian was born in Boston MA and grew up in Watertown MA--a rich melting pot of Armenians, Greeks, Italians and Irish--and was actively engaged in Armenian music, dance, poetry, and literature. He attended the Amos Tuck School of Business Administration Executive Program at Dartmouth College and holds an M.S. in Science Communication from Boston University and a B.S. in English from Northeastern University.
Mike has worked as a writer and editor, a marketing executive for high-tech and non-profit organizations, and consultant in marketing and strategic planning for institutions across many industries including higher education. Most recently he served as Vice President for Enrollment, Marketing and Communications at Wheelock College in Boston where he also led the College’s strategic planning using an approach he devised that is recommended by the Association of Governing Boards to its 1,200 member institutions.
In addition to being a published poet, Mike holds national and international awards in writing and communications. He lives with his wife, Carol, in Amherst NH and can be reached at mike.akillian@gmail.com.
The canvas is a composite --
valley rising to meadow drying
into sleek desert;
a tree, broad and creviced, squats
beneath its shadow in the foreground
and counterbalances with a single distant mountain.
Except for the sky, everything is some shade
of earthworking and the texture of rich soil
that so enticed invaders.
The people are of earthtones too. The man
by the tree standing in the shade
of his mustache is almost sepia,
the young man in the meadow, the women
whose skin darkens to the tawny sand
of the desert where they walk.
It is the reds are missing.
I squeeze red onto the immediate starkness
of the white palette -- red
the shade all red things want to be.
In one place I mix tree sap, dark,
viscous, until I see bubbles trapped
and trying to rise like something
that wants to say itself.
I use a matchstick.
Clods of clay and dark earth I mash
into another for texture. I use
a horse hoof.
Onto a third I pour fine sand to break
the brightness. My tongue stirs in its saliva.
I finish this painting for you
Uncle Aram, patriarch, broad and strong,
lashed to the tree and burning with it
mingled in sizzles and smoke,
and for you cousin Carnig,
buried in your earth to the shoulders.
As the horses grew large you bit back
your eloquence and spoke with silence,
and for you Maral, small deer,
plunged early into womanhood
all along the wide, relentless arc
of beaten sand steps
that never did close the circle.
This poem is part of the volume entitled "The Eating of Names", published by Ashod Press, 1983. It has appeared in ARARAT and is reprinted here by kind permission of the author.
APP and its producer, Lola Koundakjian, retain the right to accept or reject any poetry submission(s) based on the criteria provided by the project description.
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