May 2017
After teaching at a college in South Florida for thirty years, I retired, and my wife and I have traveled around the country, and moved twice in the past two years. Now that we are settled, we are looking forward to exploring our new city and making new friends. Some of my poems have appeared recently in such journals as The Broken Plate, The Comstock Review, Exit 7, The Lake, and Third Wednesday. Amsterdam Press published a chapbook of my poems entitled The Arboriculturist in 2010. Check out my author's page on Facebook or go to my blog at http://www.michaelminassian.com.
A Family of Giants
Hiking the woods
near the end of the day,
Jack and I follow
the incline of the path
between trees whose leaves,
rich with color,
scatter yellow and red
in the slightest breeze.
At the top of the hill,
Jack points to the lake
in the distance below
and tells me an Armenian
folktale about a family
of giants who lived in caves:
the females with breasts so large
they flung them over their shoulders
and the men with lips so full,
that one touched the earth
and the other reached the sky.
“What do we call the world?”
he asks, “When the giants
no longer reveal themselves?”
As we walk, he tells me
when he first
came to this country
he shaved his moustache
and trimmed his eyebrows
so he would look
less like a foreigner.
“That’s why I became
a writer,” he said.
“When I spoke,
there was no way
to cut off my accent.”
Who wouldn’t want
to be an American? he adds.
Then we turn, making
our way back through
the woods to the house
where my aunt waits;
following our long shadows
in the afternoon sun
as they cross in front
of us on the road home.
© 2017 Michael Minassian
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