The word, ‘Turkish,’ so sweet, so brutish. The word, ‘Armenian,’ in the roof of your mouth.
We make love between turns we take to say them,
these two words like stars in singing constellations burning the distance between them,
utter each consonant, suck each vowel like the tail of an oud, thrust each syllable,
purse the Turkish lip like sugar, mention that Armenian is
more gauche, like a horse, a spit in the dark. But you’re not Turkish,
though I’d wish you’d be, so I could lick back your desert sun with a tongue on your cheek.
But you’re Armenian you might say, you’re not supposed to like these things, or
you might not know all they left behind, that love is a product of what distance never finds.