Dear APP readers:
In this rescheduled Zoom reading, Gregory will read poems from his new book, Sojourners of the In-Between, sponsored by the Katonah Poetry Series, on January 31st, at 4:00 PM.
Please click on http://katonahpoetry.com which will tell you how to register and obtain your Zoom link.
It civilizes me,
not like a private sense of bed
but that I have powers of speech at all—
I think I am going to stop
eating bits of paper
that don't say anything on them—
that don't even say anything on them—
I know I should do something
as they say, "for the snows of embarrassment"
like a day in March when the blood is closer,
day singing for the loss of its whip.
Closer, I say, closer.
Or maybe I'll arrange to have you run over by horses
unexpectedly.
At first it will seem terrible,
a wood-framed tableau in which you're torn limb from limb
or in what as a photograph an idiotic stranger will see and call "wild dust"
then ask about the car park,
something he says
that he brings out like a bow-legged cowboy walk
or leaning with one elbow on the counter.
He's our witness, how awful.
But eventually in our separate ways, we'll see the wisdom in it.
The horses are brown. They're from a painting
hanging in my once-room at the Hotel Phillips
in Bartlesville, Oklahoma.
When the next day I saw sunset on the prairie
it gave the impression that the world would go on
as only grassland.
It was my wish
not to know
its reach.
I looked at it like a dog,
a dog waiting to be shot
with a long rifle,
or just a double-barrel shotgun.
O sweet shotgun, make the sun go down.
From It is Daylight (Yale University Press, 2009).
Click to hear The Survivor read by the author, Nancy Kricorian.
Love is not all. It is not food nor drink.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Nor is food love, but palate's sport alone.
Even with ceremony, without toast or vow,
it is just means of keeping flesh on bone.
But table and altar are confused somehow.
We substitute our food again, again
for rites of love. Look how this buffet sinks
with golden fowl and platters of grain
and candles for our eyes to drink.
Love is not food. But in the name of those
with parched throats, who could not eat
or pray, whose empty mouths have closed,
whose bellies swelled with pain not meat,
we call it sustenance when it is shared.
And sharing we call prayer.
From Songs of Bread, Songs of Salt, Ashod Press
Due to technical issues, this reading was postponed. So many voices in the room
all missing each other
like a laser beam circus
or the part in the movie
where the thief needs
to infiltrate the stash’s safe
or get the remaining pearls
but the zig zag of red
lines is in the way (he mustn’t
touch the line in his routine
or else all hell will break
loose in the form of sirens
and bells, cutaways and fades
to possibly a sprinkler
system about to go off as well);
we are those obliqued lines
in hot pursuit of anything
but each other, too electric
to touch or embrace for long
or extend the figure of a
shoulder out for a head to lay
on, to cry on, and/or while
the thief steps over us—too
easily, now that we think about
it—and gets to what he must,
inevitably, get to, which is,
of course, whatever is behind
that goddamn unforsaken door.
From As It Ought to Be online magazine
About the Author: Award-winning writer, musician, and educator Alan Semerdjian’s writing has appeared in several notable print and online publications and anthologies over the years including Adbusters, The Brooklyn Rail, and Diagram. He released a chapbook of poems called An Improvised Device (Lock n Load Press) in 2005 and his first full-length book In the Architecture of Bone (GenPop Books) in 2009, which Pulitzer Prize winner Peter Balakian called “well worth your reading.” His most recent work, The Serpent and the Crane, which is a collaboration of poetry and music focused on The Armenian Genocide with guitarist/composer Aram Bajakian, was released this past April.
The equinox will end with a snow
storm, eighty percent by ten
in the evening at thirty seven
degrees. Through the night
it will continue to deconstruct
specific colors, all into one,
and by eleven the next
morning there will be
feet to march through.
Even now, the gray
squirrels disappear, the
geese are abruptly gone.
Roots scramble
around their trunks
like some warming
self-embrace against
the ever-dropping air.
Institutions will close,
postponing, perhaps
preventing tragedy
similar to the one
in the news today.
From American Lit (Finishing Line Press, 2020). All rights reserved.
This poem was featured in Poetry Society of America
Poet Melanie Tafejian was recently awarded second place in the William
Matthews Poetry Prize hosted by The Asheville Poetry Review. The final
judge was Ilya Kaminsky. Melanie will receive $250 and her poem "On
Occupation" will be published in The Asheville Poetry Review (Vol.
26-27, Issue 30, 2020) which will be released in December 2020.
Melanie
Tafejian is a poet and educator based in Raleigh, NC. She recently
graduated from North Carolina State University with an MFA in Creative
Writing. Melanie is at work on her first book manuscript. In addition to
her first book, she is working to translating the poems of her
great-great-grandfather, Armenag Arekian, who was a survivor of the
Armenian genocide and also a poet.
More can be found at melanietafejian.com.
CONGRATULATIONS Melanie!
Click here to view the author's video
This poem appears in the FOOD Anthology available here: https://www.flyonthewallpoetry.co.uk/... Poet Bio: Shahé Mankerian is the principal of St. Gregory Hovsepian School in Pasadena and the poetry co-director at Rockvale Review. His manuscript, History of Forgetfulness, has been a finalist at the Bibby First Book Competition, the Crab Orchard Poetry Open Competition, the Quercus Review Press Poetry Book Award, and the White Pine Press Poetry Prize.
It is the nature of crisis to pivot,
like a magnet seeking iron.
I start sewing by hand
you buy your first pair of work gloves
trade suits for pants with hammer straps
briefcase shoulder creased and faded, edging past forty
you leave it the trunk of our old jeep,
drive past derelict farms, scaled and fullered camp roads.
Your gloves are new, smooth like bright bar stock
pale wood of your handle, tongs you borrow.
I watch sparks like geese returning
on the sharp March wind
they settle on leather, feather ruffle, and fade.
You learn to roll axial, extrude backward
the breakdown, the buckle, the harden, the quench.
Inexorably, we become used to it
burns overtake the virgin brown
you search for anvils on the internet
I tell you I am drawn to one with runes and stars
the whole world open to making yourself
like nails you forge and forge again
it takes two hundred, you say, to get it right
round the heads from unsteady cubes,
the stalks from jagged twigs
into something that can hold us all together.
Katherine A. Hagopian Berry’s poems have appeared in The Café Review, “Balancing Act II: An Anthology of Poetry by Fifty Maine Women, Glass: Poets Resist,” and “A Dangerous New World: Maine Voices on the Climate Crisis.” Her collection “Mast Year” is forthcoming this spring from Littoral Books.
for Lola Koundakjian
The Armenian Poetry Project thanks longtime contributor and friend, Shahé Mankerian, principal of the St. Gregory Hovsepian School, Pasadena California. We thank the principal and all the students who participated in this project.
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.
Send your comments to armenianpoetryproject[at]gmail[dot]comFollow us on Twitter: @armenianpoetry
Click here for our 15th anniversary clip on youtube.com
