BEIRUT

    By Silva Merjanian Zanoyan


    Over there
    all that happened
    (and didn't happen)
    folded
    packed in mental mothballs
    stories fading with licked creases
    some reduced to softer versions 

    wonder why I preserve breaths
    forced through my lungs in those days
    stringed around the eye of a hurricane
    circling, demonic, nameless...
    shaking me till I'm shameless
    for a day

    on nights with a collective sigh
    stinging and I can't tell
    which tale will toll for me
    and which nocturnal howls
    to lift the dust
    through endless times
    to relive in slivers
    of a pink tip of my tongue
    afraid to bite a dreamt memory
    that it might hemorrhage 
    bleed the sheets of night

    I want a dripping whiff of that afternoon coffee
    instinctively bitter, solemnity and hot
    ten minutes when lonely hearts
    willed an arching cease fire
    and time hovered among us
    long enough for my mother
    to build castles in my cup

    over there
    the man flying his doves
    on the roof top across two streets
    remains a blur
    but the doves stirring the air
    in perfect shades of unison
    (I had named them after heroes long forgot)
    sometimes still raise dust in my room
    of their feathers' aches and plight

    I believed then
    I could break away 
    would break away

    I did one day
    the doves were left to die

    over there
    at dusk my father played the mandolin
    and my mother's voice filled all the gaps
    between our breaths -
    the dam that held surpluses of war
    long enough for us to shed in dreams

    why do I long for hell
    on nights
    when I can't sieve my sigh from the wind's eye
    and I wonder if I should really break away
    from a circle named dead doves parade
    Gone fishing, drinking in the wild.
    perhaps
    scent of jasmine
    still smells like home
    back home in the rain.


--
Silva Zanoyan Merjanian is an internationally published poet residing
in Southern California. She released the first volume of her poems
Uncoil a Night in 2013 with all proceeds donated to Syrian Armenian
Relief Fund. Some of the publications she's been featured in are:
Streetcake Magazine, Miracle-ezine, The Literary Groong, Mad Swirl,
The Galway Review, The Artistic Muse, Poet's Basement at
Counterpunch.org, an international political newsletter, Le Mond N'est
Pas Rond, The Oddity, Red Fez, Young Men's Perspective volume 3,
Munyori Literary journal, Ygdrasil, a Journal of the Poetic Arts. She
is proud to be part of the Anthologies `The Art of Being Human- An
Anthology of International Poetry', volume 3 and 6. Sagittarius, The
Inspired Heart, Editions 1 & 2, a collection of International Poetry
by publisher Melinda Cochrane, and the Blue Max Review. Silva was
shortlisted for the Fermoy International Poetry Competition 2012, and
was invited to Ireland in August 2013 to introduce her book Uncoil a
Night. She is invited again to read at the Fermoy festival 2014 in
Ireland and at The Art to Be Human International Festival Literary Art
and Music 2014 in Switzerland



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