HISTORY
My father said there were no other
words like the compound words
in the Armenian language.
For example, jahgahdahkeer, which means
fate, destiny. If you break the word
apart, jahgahd means forehead, keer
means letter, letter of the forehead,
or the writing on the forehead,
meaning fate, destiny may be allies.
There is something both beautiful
and terrifying of the thought of words
left there above the brows, below
the hairline, untamable, unpredictable.
If it appeared to us, would it say
divorce, drop-out, theft, early death
or seventy years of the same meaningless work,
modern-day hermit, or worse, mother of five who
dreamt of the ballet every noon, heart attack?
Would his have said, minister, misery,
could have made it to ninety, if things
became cobblestone, cash, courage?
TECHNIQUE
Jagadakeer in Armenian
literally means forehead-letter
or perhaps the letters
the forehead illuminates.
My father would correct me,
the writing on the forehead.
To be the master of what’s
coming, supernatural or not.
I hear my father say
the word providence,
speak of decrees of nature,
this is where his voice becomes
bass and tenor at once,
glorious vibrato for variation,
he declares that to embrace
the mysteries of the universe
you must be able to gaze
at hill and hummingbird
simultaneously. Panoramic.
Neptune and nest. Father,
at birth the word illness
must have been written
above my brows. Could it be
that the wrinkles now
are cross-outs? Where you
are now, do you see my rage,
sentences, printed or peerless
the test results strewn about?
Father, like my health,
could you cause reversal,
even if for a moment,
to stand at the front door
scent of coffee and pear,
eyes as amethyst, magnifying glass,
storm, brilliant igneous father,
wasted genius, brokenhearted
hidden man, come back,
pontificate. I’d like to show
you how things vanished.
I’ve written, unheard of, words.
Father, Baba, why do I try
to rebuild your story?
Can the body be rebuilt
if the story can do the same?
IMPRESSION
with contrast:
Amor Fati. To remember the tin
shack, the tent. Embrace embers.
To love your fate seems a bit
like loving the wrong and right
of each morning, adoring pantheons
that don’t bend, demons that don’t
turn motifs from stone to saffron.
When you are a mother
the day reigns as a tyrant
the night a mental scourge.
Two uncles as poets. Syria the muse
of one, books the sulfer of pages.
The other, black ink, a long corridor
from 1975 strewn across balconies.
Talented men, men with notebooks
brass lamps lit at nightfall, always
broken. But what of the women,
the aunts? Was there not just one
who yearned for her voice beyond
the folksong, the hum above dishrag
wrung dry? If we go beyond a widow
embroidered. Threads to stabilize
a refugee’s insomnia. Work toward
the morning, the school clothes,
the bazaar to raise money.
I went from Hygieia to Anahid
because I thought birth language
might be essential. The sounds
of Armenian, made of walnut,
apricot, cuneiform to monk.
My father held morphology,
syntax over a glass table,
telling me not to shatter
anything until I knew sounds.
Mother knew only syntax
of birth and bread, expected
nothing further except on
her deathbed. I can’t find
a cure speaking an ancient
tongue that isn’t mine. So,
I sing sharagan, folksong to
answer Anahid’s open eyes.
She uses the dream terrain
to send this: don’t think
the injured limb doesn’t
grow its own alphabet,
ambition, to re-anoint
frankincense with loss.
If I find the connection of
how it is one body develops
lesions, the exact moment
of injury, can all be reversed?
Because really, coins left
on the trail sometimes works.
If I find a microfiche of the
newspaper that recounts
the exact time when my father’s
family along with all the others
escaped Alexandretta to find
themselves in Beirut, Lebanon
1938 a nest of seashells, opening
of the New Port, can something
be remedied of my father’s past?
If I rub limestone and chalk
between my fingers, create a fury
resembling my missing you
can I reach the top of the anticline
the mountains between you
and mother, before you met
can I clarify why we never became
what we set out to be?