Armine Iknadossian

RED POEM Red is so needy; so eager to spill onto the floor. A metaphor that fills cracks in cement after stabbings, lives in climates of palms, in myriaqd blotches where we rub, in dreams of coffee-stained moons in Budapest where the Danube crossed the road on which you left me after I ashed my cigarette in your dinner; the blush of your cheek still in my hand. You taught me that God is red, but like a sky recovering from a dog day in August the tapping of rain on the sizzling rooftops echoes reminders of you in postscript urgency: an image of a hummingbird’s belly, a sliced blood orange on a white tabletop, the color of skin after the slap, your lips a red guitar....

five dollar coffee, two dollar therapy, blue bus, gold line, blue pills, Hollywood sign Disney’s mousetrap behind Orange Curtain the future of western civilization is uncertain Echo Park and overpriced artists studio after Mi Vida Loca goes to video thrift turned vintage, bottle of water as third appendage brownstones in Bel Air, Oxycontin cocktails street merchants of Venice, tattooed arms like black licorice shaky beachfront property, make your first mil at thirty...

Remember the curtains Mother? How they wrapped their arms around the sofa on windy days, how the blue-tongued ocean below our window licked the painted toes of French tourists in bikinis? Remember tea parties on the balcony, the red dress you sewed for me right out of the latest issue of Burda magazine? And then the missile’s cry, how its whiny trajectory fooled us as it lit up the summer sky during rooftop dinners....

Eat boiled wheat and pomegranate seeds to celebrate new teeth. This is only the beginning; not Genesis beginning but the start of the absurd list. Announce ‘sweet bath water’ to a newly bathed person, and they must give you their clean cheek to kiss. This is lucky and good. This makes God happy. Read your fortune in the dark maps left behind in coffee cups and believe it, but don’t bet on it; what you see is what you get....

I looked for you under the barstool underneath my wine glass you were mine for one half hour stolen by an oil-streaked man in an olive-colored suit pinky ring winking who molested you with his eyes extracted you from the wedge of my pocket smoothed you out decoded you in the alley outlaw rhythm of my beating eyelashes my bracelet trailed your shapely limbs as I transcribed you from the smoky air found you floating above the candles let you fall out of your gown...