There is this tense love, this dense
text of time we’re in the state of.
That is to say, all that we once
knew and knew well is a slide-
show of memory, and we
have no recollection like
the present looking backwards.
That is also to say, these waterfalls
we ride on, the tops of the urges
and, further, the low notes in return,
are melodies everyone can sing /
has sung at one point or another
(in the shower, in the car,
for a friend, this fear or love).
Singing then is a work of wild
nature, free and spurred by air
or gravity or the moon’s care
or all of the above and more
part of us than we know, little
aquariums that we are. Planet
tilts and we go swoosh, call up
another song and wave to sleep
the dreams of our younger days
erupting on screens and newsfeeds
documenting all that we don’t
know about the world anymore
but scroll and droll and troll until
the last of the curfews run out.
Alan Semerdjian is an award-winning Armenian-American writer, musician, educator, and poet laureate of New York’s Nassau County (2024-2026). Some recognitions include two Pushcart Prize nominations; a Frontier New Poets Award; and poems in Poetry International, The Brooklyn Rail, Fence, Hanging Loose, and Mizna. Alan’s poem “The Writing About It Again” was part of a short, animated film (An Armenian Triptych: Retracing Our Steps, made in collaboration with Bajakian and international visual artist Kevork Mourad) that won honors in several film festivals. Pulitzer Prize winner Peter Balakian has called his first full-length poetry collection, In the Architecture of Bone (GenPop Books, 2009), “well worth your reading.” Alan has been teaching English in public schools for over twenty five years winning recognitions for his commitment to education while recording, releasing, and touring in support of several critically-acclaimed collections of music across a range of genres. He is on the advisory board for the International Armenian Literary Alliance, through which he founded and directs the Young Armenian Poets Awards.
The Crush