(by Oksana Lebedivna)

a curly Armenian

a curly poetess

with lips of a rosehip

with face like snow

on the skin of a mountain

~

long time ago

a mountain river

eroded your straight hair

like banks

and washed your eyes in a way

the living forgot what

had been remembered

a human being isn’t a mustard thymus or firs

a beast isn’t a begonia platanus or junipers

not any more

~

birds swish

with wide wings

in the air

you are saying to me

a stone can be a stone

but it’s hard to believe

and that if my hearing were impaired

somewhere high in the mountains

I don’t need to stop treading ahead

~

as same as me

you’re afraid of a word

genocide — tsekhasphanutyun –

геноцид

and I feel how my black earth

stares at me again

drying out my skin

breaking up my bones

~

you take off a cherry ring

out of your trigger finger

you leave it under the light

and voices come to us

and you write out by hand shnorhakalutyun

I put дякую

and these words become the longest among the words

~

listen

I want to write

with our red ink

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(by Marie Sevs)

The bed covered with

coats, cases, and notebooks.

SHE is freezing…

Waiting for her at one a.m.

SHE is patient.

Trembling a little but

Listening to her hopeless cries,

Wiping her soaking cheeks.

SHE stands by the boudoir

Watching her for what seems like a lifetime…

SHE is freezing…

She is dragging the bed covers,

Throwing them to the floor.

Her care is wordless.

SHE was freezing…

But SHE no longer is.

Not because of the warm sheets

But because of her

Mad gesture.