Today I will make bread: Butter. Eggs. Olive oil. Water. Milk. Flour. Salt. No yeast. Baking powder instead. Knead lightly, roll out, cut into small portions. Brush with egg. Sprinkle with sesame seeds. Bake until golden brown. Rejoice. Poor orphans, your mothers and fathers are dead. No more your good-smelling grandfather. No more your grandmother, her wise and angry voice. Hold out your hands, dear ones. Let me fill them with bread....
Somewhere, long ago, in an ancient, rocky land, there was an old man warming himself by a fire. He was alone. The world he knew had died - his world: the people he loved, gone, the children playing in his village, gone, the village itself, gone. Only the sun remained, and the wind and moon and sea, and the rocky ground that led down to the sea. His only companion was his fire....
The south wind rises stirs leaves among Fresno graves I am reminded of past storms ruined raisins the two of us walking through muddy fields bending over trays stuck to the ground in perfect rotting rows father and son using simple words to express amazement hide disappointment convince ourselves next year will be better
MY GRANDMOTHER, 1974 By William Michaelian My grandmother sings Arravod Looso eats batz hatz and cheese all day watches soap operas with cross-eyed American girls wearing lots of makeup stealing each others' husbands having their babies amot she says I can’t believe my eyes what are they doing who are these women why do they want to show everything when I was young my mother wore three dresses at a time a girl would fight to preserve her honor I remember Siranoush Gulian took her own life when she was violated her poor mother lost her mind and these girls look at them they keep their mouths open like prostitutes you can read their minds here have some grapes sit we’ll talk how are things at school turn that thing off these filthy Americans make me sick please sit by me tsakoog....
Long ago, on a street corner in the city where I was born, there was a dump truck full of large green cabbages parked in the mud. The driver of the truck raised the bed, forming a mountain of cabbage on the ground. Suddenly, from nowhere, several dozen women appeared, as if they had been waiting beneath the pavement itself. In exchange for their tears and in some cases a few small coins, the truck driver, an unshaven man in his sixties, handed cabbages to the women....
We lived a life behind these walls. Brothers united by blood and sacred theme, our mission was to wait and watch and pray through summer’s dust and winter’s ice and mud, and through the sweet, sad longing of autumn, and spring’s blind, erotic dance. Now, we are gone. But the walls remain, solemn and gray, bearing the scars of man’s sad war upon himself. In crevices, generations of windblown seed put down roots, then spring forth like a boy’s new soft beard....
In my dream, the men breaking rocks tell me the old man is crazy. I say, “What old man? None of you is over thirty.” “You know,” one says. “The Armenian.” I smile and light a cigarette. It’s true. Every Armenian I’ve ever known is old. The damn fools are born that way. I go to where the Armenian is working. I stand behind him and watch awhile as he steadily, patiently, breaks rocks....