Bio Note:
Born in New York City, I grew up in New York and New Jersey. In addition to living in Florida, California, Connecticut, North Carolina and Texas, I lived and taught overseas in England, Jamaica, Saudi Arabia, and South Korea. For over 30 years I taught in the English Department at Broward College in South Florida. I also studied and served as a guest tutor for ten years at Cambridge University’s Summer Study Program in the UK. I’ve published two chapbooks of poems – The Arboriculturist (out of print) and Jack Pays a Visit as well as three poetry collections, Time is Not a River, Morning Calm and A Matter of Timing – all available on Amazon. I’m also an avid photographer; my photos have appeared in print, online, and in exhibitions in New Jersey, Florida, Texas. My wife and I recently moved back to New Jersey where I’ve re-connected with old friends and family members. Our children and grandchildren live in California and we visit as often as possible. My daughter (a writer and poet) and her husband produce a podcast and made several short films including Severus Snape and the Marauders (a Harry Potter Prequel) which as of this writing has over eleven million views on YouTube. The grandson of survivors of the Armenian Genocide, I was profoundly affected by my grandparents and their first-person accounts of the genocide and stories of survival. As I searched for my own place as a second generation American, I looked to the culture I had inherited. I found myself creating an identity, history, and Armenia of my imagination. |
Twelve Views of Mt. Ararat
“From the sky fell three apples: one to the storyteller, one to me,
and one to the person who has entertained you.”
- Armenian Folk Tale
I From my exile across the border, I see Ararat through the parting clouds above Yerevan: the blue sky splits – window panes shatter – shards fly across the horizon. Rain, then sunlight falls upon the piano dappled black & white keys: dual cones – arpeggio of mountains. II I fall asleep in the Laundromat & dream of a hand emerging from the firmament, kneading the mountains, seeding the clouds; whose whistling do I hear as I awaken? whose sins are being washed? III My eyes are on fire, my grandmother always said. (an Armenian idiom that defies translation). my eyes are on fire, Ararat; I have glimpsed your flaming vulva the magma of your crowning birth. IV I see Ararat captured in Ani’s eyes: she parts her crimson lips, opens her mouth to sing – light as air, she slides from beneath me and brushes her hair front and back in a mirror turned towards the sky like cicadas trapped far from mountain or tree amid the sunken ruins of an ancient abandoned city. V Ararat: I found you sleeping inside an ancient white shell – at Easter time my mother would save one egg for each year, placing it in a bowl in the curio cabinet near the front door – dried seed of blood’s dawn. VI Ararat: if I laid your body flat on the earth, your groin and head would stretch across the plains and rivers stabbing Asia like an archaic word: caravan, oasis, tapestry, spun silk sword. VII Ararat: I see your architecture older than Athens or Rome; older than Babylon’s towers and spires; older than words this tongue could form – your cuneiform crown. VIII Ararat: I dream of you: I am obsessed w/ your stones, your snow your volcanic voluptuousness. I am possessed by your nouns and verbs, your personal pronouns. I am in love with your catechisms, your catalogues your indescribable and infinite solidity and structure. IX Ararat: Will you press your mouth to my ear? Will you press your ear to my chest? will you be silent for the beating of my heart and the roaring of the clouds as they stray beneath your summits – your sharp-tipped forked tongue? X Ararat: what were you called before man named you? before words existed for stone & fire or mountain & ocean what name did you call your creator? what name did she call you? XI Ararat: the human body has 206 bones: how many bones lie beneath your rubble, rock, and ice? how many centuries will you hold your secrets? The human heart has no bones; love has no skeleton; forgiveness not made of flesh. XII Ararat: I find a postcard with your photograph taken over a hundred years ago – you have not changed. On the back, in black ink a message is scrawled in Armenian letters I cannot read; now slightly smeared by tears or rain they lie curled like ancient fruit in a paper coffin.
Remember the Starving Armenians
In my mother’s kitchen food was weaponized plates piled high with pilaf tomatoes, chicken, and lamb. Remember the starving Armenians, my mother said. History sat down at the table with us; our lost family kept alive half a century later in Northern New Jersey, Long Island, and the Bronx. During the First Genocide of the Twentieth Century, America sent ships full of food, nurses, and nuns to the Mediterranean; posters hung in town squares and full-page ads appeared in the New York Times: Remember the starving Armenians A million and a half dead, another million scattered around the world. But I had to finish my dinner no matter how full I felt and if any scraps remained on our plates my mother stood at the kitchen sink and licked each one clean – our kitchen at least one place on earth we ate for the empty places we ate for the dead.