Vladimir Mkrtchian

You were barely an arrow

in the quiver of warmth

I called upon

to nock at the ineffable

to aim at the unsung:

Teen years of a man’s handiwork

❦

A flask sleeps with a shaker

of salt—olive oil, I slide 

past post-mortem morning’s 

cabbage to the one who’s solid

as their work—my love

knows me for all I am

soft snow me, poised point

me, meager me—adore me

praying to a mantel of feather

silks and grape leaves

❦

Earth is marble: pen ink

and coffee ground—I live 

in a miniature world colonized 

by foreign breadth, midnight gin &

night jasmine you—I erase

you who never cared for the 

rising and fall of chest or knew 

the lack of curve every lune:

body of bedlam, always sleeping

a lip away

❦

Arteries burn gold, shoulder kisses to the one

I love, cold clay—the orphanage of my untouched

beetle sheen, poppy lips, my bones could

wear to sand—never change, you; mourning glory

❦

Sweet like synesthesia, no better than a streetcat’s

mewl, my tired tune—exotic tongue you’ll never know

Sweet like synesthesia, you sing—my daylove beats to 

bruise—he loves me, you speech. He loves

this—my new exoticism, parasitic 

jasmine, my swording

bones: thin skin.

Forget this lurid library—my battered

blaze—self-efface my armored 

love. Forget you 

who I wore and adore. You

who I rapt in my gallery of overripe 

and dried fruit. Forget you

as I poise another arrow to my ineffable—

this painful season’s boyhood.