Remembering my grandmother, hadji' s journey out of turkey to find refuge, I imagine her making toys from branches, creating hair with orange peels...... my own journey littered with the curse of the mundane and the godless...... furiously stabbing the needle into blue stained fingers with the currents of my shame.... lulling ourselves into a trance of forgetting... looking for food and nourishment in all places...seeking a different survival... looking to the outside to feel/feed the inside.... half alive, eyes closed , pockets filled with nuts and patched turmeric tea bags..... mixing memory and hope.... reaching back to days of joy, juicy apples without end.. journey of the undeserving .... with her by my side...
Valerie
Parallel Journeys
Valerie Fanarjian
My senses are caressed, assaulted by everything around me.....white tulips, shoes piled in the mud .... news reporters' voices droning over floods, snake like mass exits .... faces of fear and longing in shadows, in my head..... music of the broken wash over me and I remember a different trauma, one where only endless sweeps of red paint over pages and pages of pledges and apologies begin to erase the madness .the beauty of silence, and its accompanying terror move my hands.... hands in prayer, cleansed of dishonorable thoughts
I fill pages with confessions, accusations, scraps of napkins that once caught the dried seeds of apples and desperate promises that are unintelligible to anyone but the most self-righteous.
Email: vfanarjian@simons-rock.edu
Valerie's Interview
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