Get them wet;
let her golden curls tumble
over you, let her rip you out
onto a sea dark
and deep as the approaching night.

Maybe you can keep up with her
for a while. Don’t
lose sight of the land.

Mount Ararat, by Martiros Sarian

Garegin kissed Siran and bade her a good day as he left for work. He was a history teacher at Slough City High School. He’d been teaching there since receiving his history degree and teaching credential from Fresno State College. Being Armenian, history was something he’d been immersed in since childhood. It was understood among his elders that a career in teaching history, though not lucrative, would be a means to communicating the truth about “the Genocide.” Garegin enjoyed history, and he was as natural a teacher as most, so he received the role of teacher with the consent of his nature as well as the blessings of his elders, but he didn’t seem to like to talk about the Genocide. He didn’t make a point of shunning the subject, but he always seemed to have something else to talk about. Siran liked the subject even less, but nobody expected her to lecture on the topic.

Garegin and Siran had met at college, and had quickly grown close there. Siran had not been put off by the fact that Garegin had not set out to maximize his bread winnings, so long as he didn’t mind her seeking to win some bread on her own. She had been studying to be an architect, though she would find her maternal ambitions to be stiff competition for her career ambitions. Garegin got a teaching job at Slough City High, and the couple found a house nearby the school.

They named their first child Armen. There were complications, and the doctors told Garegin and Siranush that Armen would be their last. The young couple discussed adoption now and then, and that talk led them to consider Turkey, where they hoped they might find an Armenian child in need of a family.

In an Istanbul orphanage, they found an infant named Kynthia. The child was not Armenian, yet Siran was so charmed by her that they could not leave her in that orphanage if they could help it. Garegin saw a sharpness in the child’s amber eyes that startled him, and the sudden adoration that he recognized in Siran’s eyes cast aside all hesitation.

They were told that Kynthia had been born on a nearby island. A man had brought Kynthia and her brother to the orphanage. The brother’s whereabouts were unknown. He’d been claimed months ago.

Garegin and Siran didn’t change the girl’s name but called her Cindy, and Armen, just learning to talk, was soon calling her “Sid’dee”.

Siran enjoyed the outdoors, and she’d spend whatever time she could in the yard with her children, reading, gardening, or sketching architectural visions. Cindy watched the birds intently, and she liked to play with Saroyan, the family cat. Cindy adored animals, and she was always curious about bugs. She inherited her mother’s love of the outdoors, and began to vanish out the back door as soon as she could reach the doorknob. She was an active, precocious toddler, and a sporting match for her big brother. She excelled in testing the limits of people, animals, and latches, and so frightened her parents. With every passing month, they thanked their stars for having avoided disaster.

Cindy became an able practitioner of the chase, the ambush, the lure, and the trap. She would watch birds and squirrels for hours, often holding bread crumbs or other treats as lures, and she studied Saroyan. He taught her a thing or two.

Continue …

I’d heard somewhere that the Amtrak
Route between Eugene and Klamath Falls
Features some great scenery,
So this time I went to Albany by train.

Regrettably for the grand mountain vistas,
The northbound leg was clouded over
And the southbound leg, well,
The conductor saw fit to assign seats
So as to obstruct my view.

I’d sooner go out of my way to see a mountain than a woman.
I’m not proud of it, but I accept it as the way I am;
Yet in this case I must confess,
Seats 63 and 64 have found their calling.
Mountain be damned.

I’ve been listening to her for hours,
Trying to understand what she’s whispering.
Her face is young, unpainted, modest, silent;
her lips aren’t moving.

The frames she reads her paperback through
Also whisper.
Not thin, not shy. They’re not afraid to be noticed.
Their full, rounded rectangles don’t mind
If I think they’re a little nerdy, perhaps,
And I wonder if I should visit the library more often.

But then,
That’s not what her little feet are whispering.
Naked, entangled
In their jackets of white straps,
They match the arcs of leather
With arches and curves of their own,
From her Achilles’ arc to her inner arch
To the neck of her big toe,
The arch of her back, of her lips—but
I digress;

Flexing upward, vigilant and erect,
Her alluring little big toe watches me warily,
Her naked little neck stretches, strains
Against her white leather collar,
Guarding her four little sleeping sisters against
My covetous eyes,
And I see that I’ve been caught.

But I’ve come too far to turn back. My eyes, now hers,
Climb beyond the white straps and delicate ankles, and
She’s left her calves out, full, proud, delicious.
How magnificent they must seem against the cheek
Of a better man, and
I can see that she’s wisely bound them,
rolled her dark blue denim over and over,
To keep them in check, for I see that they could
Misbehave, and, I am frightened of their sleek,
equestrian power,

but the denim is strong.
It binds them well, I feel them
pressing tenderly against the cotton as I cross
And I crawl across her little black belt
And suddenly self-conscious,
she pulls her undershirt down over her naked waist.

I think it’s trying to escape. I can’t blame it.
But it’s no good.

The shirt closes over the valley of her belly like
a linen curtain
across a bedroom window at night
Leaving me lost
in the dark. I crawl blindly
clinging to the hem of her white curtain

And she sneezes—nearly knocking me off, but
I grab for the summer green of
Her tee—it does poor work of concealing
Her majestic, montaine relief,

Clothed in green
Like the grassy, rolling mountains of Scotland
But the Campbells and the MacDonalds never saw anything like these
Delicious fruit who would so ably mother me, they
Make the mountains across the canyon seem hollow, insubstantial.

Her shoulders and arms are wearing a little
Hooded jacket that cannot possibly enclose
The fullness of her womanhood
The garment must be employed strictly for emphasis.
What practical purpose could it possibly serve?
She must always be warm, I hear the jacket
Whisper to me, and
I cannot speak. Suddenly

My lungs remember
To breathe, with
Those mischievously delicate fingers
bound in silver rings as though
Silver could restrain those dangerous little appendages.
Her ten little white huntresses have captured something
(other than my fumbling eyes)
And they’ve dragged their poor lucky prey to her
little mouth.

They rip the yellow skin open like a wrapper,
And pick the sweet bits of flesh out like candy
To be devoured.
I should be so lucky.
The yellow wrapper—is familiar—
No. It can’t be.
Fruit gushers?
Children eat fruit gushers!
Somehow I don’t think I’ll be buying those again.
At least—
Not for my kids.

Gesundheit, whether you be
A woman or—whatever you are,
We’re all under the weather, dear girl.
You’re running out of tissue
And I’m running out of aspirin.

What men say of your beauty
Can only be blasphemy
Now that I see you
Bound to the heavens
Right before my eyes
With beauties and beauties
Intimate as the stars,
and equally untouchable.

Men claim to have seen you,
But speak only of your jewels
Sparkling under your mother’s proud eyes
Between Perseus and Pegasus
And over me, we lie;
You are so obviously near.
My arms would reach out to you,
If I could only tell them to.
They would rescue you from your heavenly chains
If I could only touch you.

It happened one day that when the boy was out fishing on the sea, pulling in his nets, he found a large fish snagged among the few fish that he’d caught. The boy congratulated himself on pulling in such a large catch. There would be plenty of meat for his family, and they’d make a dime or two from selling what they couldn’t eat themselves. “Father will be so proud of me!” he exulted, and the creature spoke. “Please, fair fisherman, show mercy on me and return me to the sea, and I will surely make it worth your while!” The boy laughed “ha! Ha! What do you have that I could use beside your meat and bones?” The creature answered, “Surely you see that I am a magical creature. Has it not occurred to you that I might grant you your dearest wish? Have you not heard of such things?”

“Heard? Heard, yes!” laughed the young fisherman. “I’ve heard it in fairy tales. Surely you have too!”

“Ah but this is no child’s tale,” argued the creature. “I am quite heavy, no? Have you ever known a fairy tale so heavy?”

“Yes, you are quite heavy, and you talk,” but the same is true for my aunt Mathilda. She is even heavier than you, and she chatters on just as you do, but she grants no wishes.”

“That is fair,” conceded the creature, “so I shall have to prove myself.”

“Yes, you shall,” the boy nodded and paused for a moment, the he said “go, you’re such a talker. You tell me my wish!”

“Oh ha-ha!” the creature laughed. “That’s easy! What magical fish in all the sea doesn’t know that your wish is to sit at lunch with the crown princess! But lo, no magical creature could ever grant such an absurd wish. One such as you could never sit at the table of a princess! You are so foul to look upon, and even more foul to smell! The poor princess would not be able to eat. It would be like having a pile of dead fish at the table!”

“’Tis true. ‘Tis true” conceded the fisherman. “There is no hope of it. I shall not be able to spare you.” And the fisherman turned to take up his oars and row back home.

“Wait. Wait!” cried the creature. “There must be a way.” It paused, and then cried out, “yes! I know.”

Just then, a strange feeling came over the boy from his head to his toes, and creature said, “There! Now look overboard into the water, and tell me what you see.”

The boy hesitated, but then he noticed that the soiled and bloodied rags that he’d been wearing had been replaced by clean, embroidered sleeves, and his hands had changed: they were clean and soft. “Look!” the creature cried out, and the boy hesitated no more. He looked overboard into the water to see his reflection, but he did not see himself. He saw a prince! And it was not just any prince that he saw; he saw the prince who had come courting the princess from the land over the sea. The young fisherman was thrilled.

“Now you must cast us all overboard now, or our smell will betray you!”

“Yes,” the boy agreed, and he unloaded the net into the sea. A moment later, the creature arose from the water just enough to speak, and it said, “Ye must act today! The spell wears off at sunset!”

So the boy returned to the land with haste, and upon finding one of the royal guard at the market, he commandeered the guard’s steed and rode, not very gracefully, to the castle, where he was invited in straightaway. “I have come to beg the company of the princess at the noon hour,” he spoke with authority to the captain of the guard. And so it was granted.

The princess gladly admitted the prince to her table at the noon hour, thinking him to be her beloved. When he took his seat she sniffed the air, frowned, and observed, “fair prince, you have been at sea.” Then she remembered to smile.

“Indeed I have, fair princess” he replied. “I must cross that foul pond to gain your sweet presence.”

The prince glanced left and right, as if wondering who it was that had said such noble words. Then he realized that the spell must have affected his mouth with the rest of his face.

And so they dined together that day, and after lunch they went riding across the royal hunting grounds. When the prince noticed that the sun was sinking near the horizon, he begged her leave, rode away, and returned the guard’s steed.

And so it was that the fisherman’s son got his wish, and he was not too wise to brag when the townsfolk would mock, “been to lunch with princess lately, have ye?”

“Indeed, you have heard!” he would reply.

And so this fool happily carried on. He never married, for no village girl would have him, but he could be found out at sea early every morning, casting his nets with noble anticipation.

I never knew that I’d been blind;
And then I met your eyes.
There was nothing in the world,
And then his hand
Fell on her shoulder.
The neighbors said
He’d been a strong swimmer
And he fell into your eyes.

Nevada Fall, Merced River

Throughout the lowlands singers sing
of your deep, feminine soul;
How reclining, you roll down your bed
amidst your veils and embankments;
They marvel at your fluent, accommodating ways,
how you slip through the world,
flowing around every obstacle,
rounding every edge, and
polishing every turn.

You compel us, it is true, down to where you lie.
Your eyes are limpid pools—it is true what they say,
and it is rumored far and wide that you mirror
the soul.

But the footing is treacherous around you. Your tender loam
gives way beneath our fingers and toes,
but your glistening bones are more hazard still.

It is true what men say, but I know you better yet.
I know you,
murderer.

The bones of old trees and bush
lie tangled in your arms.
I see your work.

Yesterday you might have been
merely a pool, and another, and another;
hung upon a sparkling, trickling necklace
virtually breathless and still
patient, accommodating
womb of a myriad, humming
vampires;
Algae multiplying,
colonizing your thickening blood.
The next day, you might be only lichen and bone.
Dry, white, crumbling bone, anchored deep within the earth—
or deeper still.
But now—
Now!

You gallop across mountains and vandalize
the sleepy canyons, tearing away the flesh and
leaving more bone drying in the sun,
your locomotive snarl,
your hissing, boulder-cracking roar!
Undulating waves, rolling and smacking,
sucking in air, mist storms exhaling!

Water the tyrant.
Water the destroyer—butcher, leveler,
Fury: skull-smashing and bone-snapping—sinew twisting;
Too murderously quick for suffocation; utterly

ruinous and
Beautiful kiss me.

When once I was a child in the west I was looking east,
and when a child in the east I looked west,
ever aiming through that Gateway;

and I again was on my road west
when Lady and I were again children,
basking in the wonders of commerce and truth and trivia
in fashion magazines and such vivid things,

in a moment without motion,

I looked up to feel a warm breeze from the eastern ocean,
but there was time passing in a vision

of a Gateway
rising on the horizon
over the River I could never cross completely

and in the Gateway beckoned a City
and Lady greeted the City—warmly
as though he were expected
as though they were old friends
and I followed her through the Gateway
and I cannot cross that River
and she sat in the lap of the City
she kissed the City
and before my eyes she became the City
and those eyes last saw her in the Gateway
and I continued my steps west
and I thought how strange that City had always been so friendly
how the City and I had always been such friends
but now she is the City and I cannot recognize him

And years from home I am touring Topeka
Columbia Lawrence Independence
pre dawn hours thinking on the shape of things
side walks car lots front yards thinking on the shape of things
not half sleeping in the park dodging cops and moon and
dreams that she is gazing at the sun
setting on the Pacific
that she is squinting for my silhouette on the horizon
and I am not in California
I need to see the sunrise

and her Gateway

and think upon the shape of things.

Please accept my apology
for having stooped so low,
resorting to quotations.
Take heart: I don’t cite authority lightly,
but that phenomenon that’s femi-nine—
ambiguity demands one be specific
with one’s sources of information.

I’m sure it’s nothing there’s just a
minor misalignment between the words
and their intention.

Surely it’s a simple matter of definition.

Rest assured, no sooner had she spoken it was written,
and mapped to every match in Webster’s latest
collegiate edition.

Here be where the visitors
seek advisement in these affairs,
among the natives who—
having heard a word more often—
might be a little more familiar
with words whose sounds are similar,
having only sound in common.