Photo credit: Michael Minassian

Ten years after coming to America
my grandparents, still struggling
with English and discrimination,
open a “Mom and Pop” 
store in West New York, New Jersey.

A tattered black and white photograph
shows my grandfather and mother
standing in front of the window display,
soap and laundry detergent 19 cents,
another sign urging “Eat Chicken.”

My grandfather wears a white apron
over his street clothes, his hair not
yet gone gray, unsmiling, standing
slightly apart from my young mother 
who wears the same wary expression,
their eyes dark with immigrants’ worry.

A few years later they lost the store,
another casualty of the Depression—
giving credit at first,
then too many deliveries stolen
before my grandfather could
race down the apartment stairs—
thieves who wouldn’t sleep, arriving first.

I hold the photograph in my hand,
the paper thin and light as a bird’s tongue,
feathered memories whispering, ghosts
still watching for stolen fruit and bread,
quiet whispers on the wind, 
in Armenian and broken English, 
faded warnings for shoplifters,
and the hungry, not yet dead.