Georgi Bargamian: Bruised fruit is sweetest

We laughed when you
announced that you’d eaten the
abandoned bruised pear:
one more food rescue
by a Depression-era kid. But now
I see your kinship with
broken enzymes and the
last fruits to be picked, the
tenderness in your rescue, the
ghost of you slicing
wounded flesh knowing
bruised fruit is sweetest when
eaten uninhibited and alone.



“Bruised fruit is sweetest” originally appeared in Trampoline issue 31.2, February 2026

Georgi Bargamian: Saturday dolma vespers

Gather to
witness cleansing of
blood tomatoes and
green peppers,
ground beef kneaded
wholesome head bowed
rice grains studding open
cavities salted stuffed
in a pot over flame
broth softening to
fill our bellies from the
belly of her daughter,
basil flakes of lost
highland flowers
Crushed.
“կեր, կեր”* she’d say
stroking our hair as the
vapor rested moist on our faces
in the sanctuary
she stoked for us,
Feeding.



* Pronounced “ger, ger” meaning “eat, eat” in Armenian

“Saturday dolma vespers” originally appeared in The Armenian Weekly, Feb. 3, 2026

Peter Balakian: Little Richard

On a walk past bulldozers and trucks
pouring tarmac for the NJ Eisenhower highway
my grandmother said to me as we turned

into a market with olive barrels, hanging
meat, piles of sumac and coriander—
“he shakes away my blues.” It was 1959,

and what did I know about starving
in the Syrian desert or the Turkish whips
that lashed the bodies of Armenian

women on the roads of dust. I wouldn’t
have believed that she saw
those things. The radio

was always on the sink in my grandmother’s
kitchen. “He’s a whirling dervish” she said—
whirling dervish—the whoosh of the phrase

stayed with me. I too felt his trance—
even then—as she pounded spices
with a brass mortar and pestle.

The air on fire under him
the red clay of Macon dusting his bones.

What did I know about Sufism
Sister Rosetta or bird feet at the Royal Peacock?

In the yard the bittersweet is drying up,
the berries turning gold and red.
The way memory deepens with light.

His shaking gospel voice. The heart
going up in flames. My grandmother
survived the worst that humans do.




Copyright © 2022 by Peter Balakian. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on September 9, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.

Alexa Luborsky: I was the wet cloth that kept the phyllo damp

I was the rag that lifted and didn’t catch
the edges of things. I was lamplight.
In another place, I was shaina maidel.
Here, though, I was khokh- memory
and nots- space. I was khokhanots.
I was the kitchen, a whole geography
with borders of mother
and step-father. Bubbie was nowhere
here. She left herself
to be used by my hands. Something sticky—
I remember my place. The damp rag.
Sam’s dark skin shining through
thin sheets of dough like a frame
for me to enter. My mother, the baster,
scattering walnuts. We held
our breaths, Sam’s hands initiated
their curtain call: the placement of
dough on walnut.
Phyllo, diaphragm of breath. Phyllo,
second skin too easily aged by unsteady hands.
Curtain. Sash of sweetness.
This was my mother’s kitchen
on a Friday. It was almost Easter,
so we made paklava. It was
Pesach, so I couldn’t
eat it. Pulped walnuts
thrown on tin sheets.
Her voice cocooning the words:
Never buy them crushed!
I should write this down.
I’m too busy watching the maw
of phyllo laid down like a memory
to care about this recipe for myself—
I’m humming zucchinis—
my sounds long in Armenian.
No one minds squash any season.
I grow like this, keeping
my mind elsewhere. I don’t call to Bubbie
willingly. Without her, I know how I’m supposed
to move: All Armenian. We are doing the same things with our wrists
whether it is 1915 or no. Opening
our palms to cup something
paid dearly for. All words, papery layers of seed coats
stem out of the walnuts, manuscripts
of black ink. I crush them sideways
with the blade of my tongue.
I’m a good -nots. A good recipe
for what I am missing. I pull the cover
from a mirror. Memory space
meant only for one part of me.
Bubbie has never been
here. So I dance and I sing
an Armenian dance, an Armenian song.
Why don’t you clap for me?
I say to her even though somewhere she might
actually be clapping. I know this
and still can’t see her making
a sound. There is an Armenian “I”
and a Jewish “I” and somewhere
there’s my body. The walnuts, shipwrecked
at the bottom of a syruped lake sit split
up on the tin sheet. Every one of my homes has its season.


Alexa Luborsky is a writer and multimedia artist of Western Armenian and Jewish descent. Her poems and hybrid works have appeared or are forthcoming in The Academy of American Poets University Prize Series, Adroit, AGNI, Black Warrior Review, Ninth Letter, The Rumpus, and West Branch, among others. You can find out more at alexaluborsky.com.

This poem first appeared in Four Way Review, issue 33 and won the
2025 Academy of American Poets Prize

Raffi Wartanian: Portrait of a Capgras

I don’t know how to write about schizophrenia
So I’ll write about my brother

I don’t know how to write about my brother
So I’ll write about schizophrenia

During a Capgras delusion
I’m a CIA agent wearing a costume to mimic myself
And with a voice modulator amplifying my vocal cords,
I give the aura of a self that I am not

My brother informs me that I’m in on it
    That I am it
        It being the project
            The project being the nightmare
                The nightmare being being
                    Being like this

I don’t know how to dream anymore
So I’ll write about the nightmare inside which I’m trapped

The nightmare goes: Boil water → Grab tongs → Clutch device → Dip into boiling water
→ Place on cutting board → Hoist hammer → Swing

The nightmare continues: Mute voices you hear → Hidden shadows you see
→ The chip implanted into your brain → I cannot save you → You remind me I’m human

I send you a poem about the name you erase, and you won’t read it
I shared Esmé Wang’s book, and you said you might get around to it

I can’t read you anymore because I glued you to a pedestal so tall
That looking up at it made my neck snap

Head hung on a thread of veins
Empty eye sockets spitting optic nerves that tether my retina
To the only view remaining of the pedestal’s underside

Meditate twice a day      Medicate twice a day
Hope for survival           Survival is victory

            Maybe we’re all just trying to survive

Schizophrenia      is      your shadow

I don’t know how to write about your shadow
        So I’ll bask in your light

Published in Poets.org. Used with the permission of the author.

Raffi Wartanian: ERASURE: George W Bush Address on Signing the USA Patriot Act

Good white terrorism.
With my signature, this danger.
I commend hard nights and weekends.

I want to thank the Vice.
I want to thank terrorism.
I want to thank the FBI and CIA for waging an incredibly important war.

I want a threat like no other.
We’ve seen the enemy our country is.
I want positive exposures.

Since the 11th of September, our intelligence and law enforcement agencies have been relentless horrors. Horrors.
Custom secret: our terrorists will help law enforcement identify, dismantle, disrupt, punish – we’re changing culture.

The number one priority is surveillance of all communications.
Investigations investigate anyone making it easier to lengthen prison sentences.

This bill upholds and respects the civil liberties guaranteed by our atrocities.
The war branches of our government are united.

It is now my honor to sign into law the USA Patriot Act of 2001.


Copyright © 2025 by Raffi Joe Wartanian. Published in America’s Future (Washington Writers’ Publishing House, 2025). Reprinted by permission of the poet.

Sylvie L. Merian: METZMAMA

 

I photographed my grandmother's hands
once.
Folded as if in prayer.
Wrinkled, aged, still beautiful
Holding within them
the secrets of a lifetime
Yet honest enough to express her pain
Gone now forever...

But the photograph remains
and
Softly reveals those mysteries
To those willing
to read
And accept silently its message.

This poem appeared in Ararat Quarterly's Summer 1982 issue.

METZMAMA

Par Sylvie L. MERIAN

J'ai photographié les mains de ma grand-mère
un jour
Jointes comme pour la prière
Ridées, âgées, toujours belles
Retenant entre elles
les secrets d'une vie entière
Pourtant assez honnêtes pour exprimer sa douleur
Disparue à jamais ...
Mais la photo reste
et
Doucement révèle certains mystères
A ceux qui veulent
lire
Et accepter silencieusement son message.


Translated by Simone J. Merian in 1982

Raffi Wartanian: How To Orchestrate A Genocide

Tweak laws
Stratify identity
Threaten activists
Silence dissent
Round up the poets
Punish opposition
Blame the victims
Appropriate their oppression
Sing of your righteousness

Say it with the right accent
So that it sounds acceptable

Do it in a suit and tie
So that it looks professional

Kill them in the dead of night
So that it seems accidental

Give the weeping mother a care package
To appear sentimental

Tell us it was a mistake
To fan the flames of an inferno

Hate with such ferocity
That it could feel like love



Copyright © 2025 by Raffi Joe Wartanian. Published in Altadena Poetry Review. Reprinted by permission of the poet.

Alexander Bilzerian: Impasto

The trees have taken sides—
left bank, right bank,
leaning into silences
that will outlast us.

The road goes
toward that salmon-copper slit
where the sky shows
it has been wrong about something
it will not name.

◊

My father drove toward dying
the way you can see where Kansas ends
an hour before you reach it.

I was in the car.
        I was the car.
            I was the distance opening
                between us,
                    no matter the speed.

◊
    
She painted this with a knife.
I need it to be a knife—
the whole arm behind it,
shoulder torquing into the stroke
the way you throw your weight
into a goodbye
that won’t stay said.

The paint is thick enough to dig in
and find another sky beneath,
older,
just as unconvinced.

◊

I keep looking for the figure,
the walker, the witness.
No one.

The painting will outlive
me standing here, wanting it
to show me his car
cresting the last visible hill,
to show me the window
still partway down,
to show me his hand
lifting once
from the wheel.

◊

It shows me a road.

It shows me where the road
runs out of light—
not all at once,
but by degrees
you keep mistaking
for almost.

—Published in Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, January 2026, and selected as the Artist’s Choice.

Luisa Muradyan: Paris

Sitting in the cafeteria at Costco, I break apart
my croissant slowly. In this rare moment
I am alone and imagine I am at a cafe
where the Eiffel Tower does the magical
thing that the Eiffel Tower always does
in movies about carefree love and wine
and fromage, where the characters might be
clumsy but in an endearing way and everyone
is hot in an objective way but I am
in my sweatpants and haven’t showered in
days and I am not there for perfume but
for the family-sized package of children’s Motrin
and you are back home ladling soup
and firing up the thermometer that blazes
red, which is an indication of desire and yes
there is a river of puke in the hallway that rivals
the canals and yes the snot on our toddler’s face
has crystallized like the rim of a crème brûlée
but I still want you to meet me at the Champs-Élysées
and tuck a flower into my hair despite the fact that it
has been in a ponytail for weeks. Let us ride
down this street together for just a little
while longer, and remark about how the air smells
like freshly baked bread and when I get home
we can open this box of croissants and pretend
that the hallway covered in crayons
is a new exhibition at the Louvre and the stack
of dishes resembles the Arc de Triomphe
because one day we will go to Paris and stand
inside of Notre Dame and be amazed at how
much a toy car that is left on a prayer bench
reminds us of home, our own cathedral
that we built brick by metaphorical
brick alongside our untrained artists who know
nothing of Monet but everything about the color of
the sunset on the Seine that in this light
looks exactly like the orange cold
medicine in this plastic cup
that you hold in your hand.


—from Rattle #90, Winter 2025

2025 Rattle Poetry Prize Finalist

 

 

 

Alan Semerdjian: THE CLEANSING

Above the black serpentine line, the hawks
begin to circle and talk of peace.

Above the broken backs of mothers, no one
can see the angles and hesitations,

only the clean sweep of idea, like wind
coming down from a distant mountain .

Someone threw a limb across the garden
a long time ago, drew up new maps

for the body, which was never not whole,
not even in the darkness, echoes, marches.

Now two hands squeeze together the ghost
town. It is not the predators we fear

as we leave memory and land in another kind
of again. It’s the rewrite of history, the birds

who stand around and watch each other,
quiet in the trees, as if the tear of talons

made no noise, as if the minds of sinister
architects did not dream of new homes.

This poem was published in the Summer 2024 issue of MIZNA

Alan Semerdjian: HAJEES for Artsakh

For the part of me I cannot name.
For the willing to remain unbroken

like a bridge to across the world.
For the almost hal, the openings

in my mother’s breath when heart
races into unfolding new territory.

Hal chuneem, she would say. I have
no—what was it? Strength? Soul?

For the sound of the word uttered
makes the air softer, land holier.

For the imprints that never vanish.
For all that does and never returns.

For the silences that can please
like a parachute led down the sky

and the silences that bleed rivers
turning history’s forgotten pages.

For in every direction, a hundred
nights without light or warmth.

For on every map the confusion,
each home an orphanage of huddles.

There is an arm broken and torn
off the torso and flung next door.

Please, understand, it means no
harm. It just wants to bury itself

and become the garden you and I
can only tend together. Please,

for the road upon which we live,
for the part of us that is still alive.

This poem was published in the Summer 2024 issue of MIZNA

Poetry competition and publication opportunity (Deadline is June 1 2026)

 

ԼՕԼԱ ԳՈՒՆՏԱՔՃԵԱՆ: Փոքրիկ տղան

Հարեւանի մը փոքրիկ տղան բարձրաձայն հարցուց

«Աշխարհի մէջ տեղ մը կայ ուր հիմա ամառ է՞»։

Հարցումը տեղին էր. այս աշնան առաւօտ, 

փողոցին վրայ, հովոտ ու ցուրտ էր ։

Բայս ինչպէ՞ս պատասխանել այդ հարցումին

առանց աշխարհագրութեան դաս մը տալու։

Տղան գիտէ՞ր որ կան հիւսիսային և հարաւային կիսագունտեր.

սորված է՞ր ցամաքամասերուն անունները,

գիտէ՞ր բեւեռներուն տեղերը,

երկիրներուն ու իրենց մայրաքաղաքներուն անուննե՞րը։

Երբեմն պարզ հարցում մը

պարզ պատասխանի մը պէտք ունի,

երբեմն ալ դասընթացքի մը։

Նիւ Եորք

Լոյս տեսած է Հորիզոն Գրական-ին մէջ

Georgi Bargamian: Escapology

I am a mutant who inherited a predisposition for casual lying.

 
My father was an escape artist who could vanish into Oriental carpets.

 
My mother was a suggestion who drifted into escape hatches.

 
The drawers in my house overflow with uncollectable IOUs.

 
Money ferments in my pockets and pools into tar pits around my ankles.

 
My parents were raised by mothers whose corneas were pierced by Ottoman needles.

 
Every day the ghost of Gomidas drags 1,200 folk songs through haunted Armenian highlands.

 
A family recipe taught my mother to cook with the same wooden spoon she used to spank me.

 
My brother invaded the body of a mafioso to eat his omertà.

 
I planted two placentas under a dying tree and watched cabbages bloom.

 
My family’s stolen gold fills the cavities of executioners.

 
I belong to a tribe of escape artists who swallowed the evil eye.

 
My parents’ gravesite is a crime scene of treasure hunts and body snatching.

 
Sometimes I exhume my parents to polish their bones.

 
My grandmother came to America with two gold coins and a thousand premeditated ghosts.

 
I perform forensic autopsies on innocent family photos.

 
My father burned down buildings to feed an oxygen addiction.

 
My mother could swallow insults whole like a crocodile.

 
I bite into memories and chew on pixels when I’m hungry.

 
You don’t need to take escapology classes to learn how to vanish.

Georgi Bargamian was a 2025 International Armenian Literary Alliance mentorship program mentee. Her poetry has been published in The Armenian Weekly, The Songs of Summer poetry anthology (Waters Edge Press, 2025), and elsewhere. She lives in Ann Arbor, MI.

This poem appeared in The Cincinnati Review

Mark Gavoor: it's complicated

it's complicated
you said and sighed.

you're telling me
i thought and sighed

it's life though
the complexities
the divine comedy
of navigating
the hormonal seas
and synaptic byways
foraging for tender moments
enchanted by the
attractive promise
of swelling hope
and yet, in the end,
mystified by...

well, most of it.

We are grateful to Mark for sending us three new pieces. This one, once again, from his blog. 

Mark Gavoor: your mujadara

it's called 'everyman's dish'
a simple steaming pot of three
or maybe ten ingredients
lentils sorted to remove the wee stones
the cracked wheat of the bulgars
onions chopped and caramelized
some kind of stocky brothy
almond milk bullionaire chicken
or beef or just plain old water
spices and garnishes steeped
with love and tradition of the
very region you are named for


i have never tasted yours...
they say is the best ever, here
or there, in this hemisphere
or that, heck, maybe the planet

but i have been nourished, often,
by the mujadara of your soul
by the mujadara of your heart
the mujadara of your very being
with every little look you give
every little thing you say...

every beautiful note you sing
laden, dripping, with joy or pathos
even better when it is
both at the same time

This poem was sent by the author. It was first published on his blog. 

Mark Gavoor: Maqam choonim Մախամ Չունիմ

if…
i could only imagine it
i can’t even

an ideal, a concept,
a perfection i want
to improvise for you
better than any poem
better than any letter
better than any
mere word or melody

a taksim, a chant,
an older than old-school lament,
the good kind, that brings us to
a peace you so need and deserve

it’s there, etched in our souls
coded in our dna
i am not good enough
or worthy enough, not able,
to extract it and even less able
to play it…

it is there, i feel it
it is sweet
    but not too sweet
it is sad
    but not too sad
it is joyful
    but not very happy

in a maqam no one
has ever heard or played
but sounding so very
familiar

so very familiar…

Mark Gavoor is Associate Professor of Operations Management in the School of Business and Nonprofit Management at North Park University in Chicago. He is an avid blogger and oud player. This poem appeared in the Armenian Weekly on Oct 30, 2025

October 5-11 is Banned Books week in the US

 The Armenian Poetry Project supports the American Library Association's initiative as  We too can trust individuals to make their own decisions about what they read and believe.

Banned Books Week launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of book challenges in libraries, schools, and bookstores. 

Take at least one action today to help defend books from censorship and to stand up for library staff, educators, writers, publishers, booksellers, and readers!

Armen Davoudian: Conscription

All the families alike in their unhappiness,
the mother waking early to draw the curtains,
to set out the butter, soon the father sitting glumly
at the head of the table, soon the son come down
dressed in fatigues, his shaved face mirrored on the table,
soon the son dying, all the sons dying: only here
is he still there, it is still dark, the butter is still cold,
the mother’s hand paused on the blinds, which fall
slightly apart, a narrow strip of white on the dark floor,
the light’s arm on the carpet like a man
reaching to touch his lover’s beard.


This poem appeared in Washington Square Review, in its Summer 2023 Issue (49)