Category: Latin America

American Pandemic, a poem by David Garyan, published in Interlitq

“American Pandemic” was first published in Volume 12 of The American Journal of Poetry (January 1st, 2022). Volume 12 was the final issue of The AJP before it ceased publication. The archive remained available for some months, until early 2023, after which the website disappeared completely.

Please click here read the story behind the initiative to republish all my work.


 

American Pandemic (The President’s Prayer)

For although you may have absolutely no choice in some matters, this does not mean the things you must do in these moments are absolutely right.
—Wilde 3:16

Dear Lord, today we give
thanks for no longer
having to fear the rapists
living next door to us—
at least those who,
out of their own volition,
did trust in the miracles
of science and go down
to the nearest vaccination center,
where shots
of AstraZeneca are done—
approved, of course, by the CDC and EU,
for its benefits
lie precisely in the fact
that it has killed
a trivial amount
of people,
and was made
by a British-Swedish company,
unlike Sputnik,
which, regrettably,
also, did ice
a similarly trivial amount,
but was, of course,
made by the Russians—
a dilemma, indeed,
for if the rapist
had simply chosen
Slavic vaccination,
it would’ve prevented
him from entering indoor
venues like movie theaters and schools,
much less having access to Europe,
where this vaccine,
along with the Chinese Sinovac,
are still under rolling review,
all for your own safety, of course.
Dear Lord, though we must keep walking
through the valley of the shadow of death,
we will fear no evil;
for Thy Protestant and Catholic
vaccines will protect us,
while the heathens of the East—
Orthodox Slavs and Chinese communists, that is,
will be barred from entering
the Schengen Area
for having disobeyed Thy command,
and taken jabs
from the forbidden list of vaccines.
For we know that your only
begotten Son, Jesus,
cares not whatsoever about all Christians,
nor even those recognized
by the United Nations,
but only those G-7 (formerly G-8) Christians,
who by their burden of upholding
democracy, human rights,
and women’s rights,
(two different things altogether,
as women aren’t humans),
did follow the true path of Thy Son
when they expelled Russia
from this hallowed community
after its illegal annexation of Crimea.
Lord, we ask that you give us
patience and strength
in this time of uncertainty—
for our other neighbor, Bill,
living with his lovely family
just four houses down,
are followers of Jehovah’s Witnesses;
despite having frequently made generous
donations to charities fighting poverty
in Sub-Saharan Africa,
they remain unvaccinated due to their beliefs—
thus posing bigger threats
than the very rapist living next door,
who, in fact, holds a bachelor’s degree
in pharmacology,
and this he received from Tufts,
meaning he has rightly
been ordained as a monk of science,
with fervent faith in all the hottest biology.
Indeed, our dear Lord,
it helps neither Bill,
who once rescued two children
from a burning building,
nor his pleasant family
that often volunteers
to pick up trash in their neighborhood,
to be good, yet unvaccinated Christians.
For the Lord so commanded:
Thou must let all vaccinated
fornicators into heaven,
for if they present
the Green Pass,
and it is valid,
every sin and transgression henceforth
shall be forgiven by the glory of God.
Let us rejoice, sweet Jesus,
and let the miscreants inside!
For it is at once righteous to do so,
but, alas, also legally necessary,
for Lord Fauci,
in all his infinite
scientific glory
and wisdom,
hath ordained that full
vaccination bestows
full immunity
against any sexual misdemeanor,
and perhaps even felony,
but only so long as blood
tests can show
the presence of antibodies;
heathen Bill, however,
can neither be allowed
to keep his job,
nor attend any community functions,
and his satanic family
shall have to wear medieval
masks of shame wherever they go.
Let us pray, dear Lord,
that blasphemous Bill
and his infernal ménage
continue being good Christians,
for their donations
and community service are important,
but let us, nevertheless,
wholly distance ourselves socially,
for they cannot be spoken
to until they receive the sacrament of vaccine.
But let us all the while, dear Lord,
invite the rapist—
provided he agrees to wear a mask
and continues, like before, observing
social distancing rules,
because, indeed, the sacrament of vaccine
works not miracles every time,
something the pharmacologist offender,
or more aptly, offender pharmacologist,
knows very well;
and so, in the name of Jesus, our Savior,
let us pray for that gentle predator,
for he has become
the epitome
of responsibility,
and a shining example
of good fellowship
towards Woman (and also Man,
but only in rare homosexual cases—
for let us not, dear God, tolerate
those who discriminate
against a misfit
that prefers chasing men),
for he knows not only
all the hip sciences,
but also totally trusts
every hip doctor and science,
even when they say
opposite things.
Let us hence rejoice
and place our faith
in that rapist,
for he truly cares
about the safety of others,
even when he’s raping them,
for he will not lay hands
on any unvaccinated souls—
no matter how strong
his urge to do so may be,
and in this way, our heavenly Father,
we didst finally see
a prominent drop
in not only COVID infections,
but also cases of sexual assault;
these latter numbers, howbeit,
are neither relevant nor crucial,
for we’re not so concerned
with them these days,
mostly because developing
vaccines against battery,
even the sexual type,
is scientifically impossible.
And so Lord, we ask that you bless
and watch over
the sexual deviants,
(but only the inoculated)
for before Johnson and Johnson
they were blind,
but now they can see,
and protect also those who took
Moderna, Pfizer, and AstraZeneca,
and especially young women
who took AstraZeneca,
since they are most at risk
of dying from it,
but let us, oh Lord, have faith
and renounce our fright—
for these fair maidens
are now vaccinated
and no longer need Thou;
truly, they hath nothing
left to fear,
for we know
that all the world’s problems
disappear after full vaccination,
two weeks after the second dose, that is.
Have no mercy, howbeit, on those who took Sputnik,
for pride, tyranny, and wickedness cannot last,
but the righteous shall live by Western-approved
jabs and that holy democracy worthy of us all—
the one which accidentally bombs
civilian targets in Afghanistan,
but only under a Democratic administration;
a Republican democracy where civilian
targets are accidentally hit,
can, absolutely, not be tolerated.
Our Father who art in heaven,
we need good, honest democratic
leaders who blow up churches and schools
in the name of Saint Schumer,
of whom the public does approve
no matter what he commands,
and if there be doubt,
it shall excuse his failures
as honest blunders;
the same mistakes
just across the aisle, however,
must properly and justly incur the wrath
of all left-leaning news networks out there,
because that is what it means to be fair,
balanced, and objective, in the name of Christ Almighty.
We ask, also, in this time of uncertainty, dear Lord,
that you promptly hear the grievances aired
by the LGBTQIA+E=mc2@admissions.caltech.edu community—
for on numerous occasions
they’ve demanded that bombs
dropped on civilian targets
proudly display Pride flags on them,
otherwise protests will erupt
across the whole country.
We pray, as well, that all who deny
the scientific thrust behind
these rockets be labeled
provocateurs and Republicans—
meaning anyone from Afghanistan
must display proof of bombing,
preferably with QR codes,
before we can consider them refugees,
much less admit them to this country,
which, supposedly, isn’t a Christian one,
but whose presidents have all been Christian.
And so, in the name of all that’s holy, dear Lord,
please forgive us for putting
sanitizer dispensers
inside your churches,
and wearing masks,
for it’s nothing personal
against you or the miracles
you’ve worked on this earth;
it’s just that washing your hands
frequently absolves us of all sins—
for if Pontius Pilate only had some Purrell
that day he was to condemn
your only begotten Son,
there would be nothing
he would need to answer for today.
Dear Jesus, please know
that if and when you decide
to have your Second Coming,
all the vaccinated rapists,
murderers, and pillagers
will be free to attend the event,
which is scheduled to be held
at the LA Convention Center,
or perhaps Madison Square Garden,
depending on parking—
strictly observing, of course,
all the social distancing
protocols recommended by the CDC.
And if the people
ever decide to crucify
you once more,
something they are bound
to do sooner or later,
proof of vaccination
will no longer suffice;
given the more exciting nature
of this particular spectacle,
negative PCR tests (valid for 48 hours)
and cavity searches will be required
to access the crucifixion site,
for when it comes to safety,
no right or freedom
is sacred enough to uphold.
Oh, hallelujah, dear Lord,
we pray that the planet
and every hallowed
thing you created,
in the name of the Father,
the Son, and Holy Spirit,
simply go to shit
while our chosen leaders
sit there and figure out
how to save us from COVID;
for there are maps, statistics,
and analysis, sweet Jesus—
so much scientific scripture
capable of showing us all,
and very precisely at that,
how fucked up things have become.
Do you not see, my brethren,
that the US registered
148,202 new cases today,
which, on a fourteen day spectrum,
represents a twenty-nine percent increase?
Have the numbers and colorful graphs
not made an impression, my dear brothers?
For if we can’t quantify something,
the problem isn’t worth solving.
And is it not such a tragedy
that we have more vaccines
than anyone knows what to do with?
For in Pelosi 2:3-4 it is so written:
When Moderna ran out,
Fauci’s mother turned and said to him—
“They have no more Western vaccines.”
But that Son of Science so replied:
“Woman, why do you involve me?
My hour has not come yet.”
And after having ordered the syringes
to be filled with Sputnik,
the patients were given those injections
and all were then amazed
they had turned into Pfizer.
The Son of Science did this—
the first of his many signs,
in Cana of America,
and it revealed his glory,
and his disciples believed in him.
So now we must jab them all,
starting with dead people
and unborn fetuses
that can no longer be aborted,
for if daily quotas are not met,
the UN will come raining down
on our asses like a goddamn fucking
firestorm with their resolutions
that have never been legally binding
anyways, hence why be afraid?
And so, feel free to keep committing
your war crimes, my fellow African dictators,
for though they might say
and even shout a lot at the UN,
fear not, I command, fear not—
for everyone sitting
in those plush chairs
will be much content
to have heard the pretty sounds
of their own voices,
only to have done nothing at all
about the problems
they so enjoyed discussing;
at most, they shall show
“deep concern about the rising
tensions in the Middle East and Africa,”
but this too shall pass,
and with some persistence,
you’ll be free to plunder again,
without those pesky
colonizers (Europeans, that is)
scolding you for being colonizers.
And so, my brothers,
forget the rising levels of racism,
greed, and unhappiness,
for there’s no science
behind them anyways—
no graphs, maps, or tables
to show us the daily increase
in anti-Semitism, apartheid,
or even xenophobia,
for all the lab rats
working in democratic countries
have yet to develop vaccines
against these pandemics,
but if there’s no jab
to solve the problem,
then there’s no problem
to begin with—
nothing worth inspecting
any longer.
Just to be safe, howbeit,
keep distancing yourself
from Blacks, Asians,
Latinos, and anyone who isn’t White,
including Arabs and Persians
with American passports,
some of whom may look
and act “Caucasian,”
but don’t be deceived, my brothers,
and remember the famous Bible passage,
Shakespeare 3:16, Act I, Scene III:
Libyans and Iranians
can cite US passports
for their own purpose.
Also never forget
the Civil Rights Movement,
and which color of skin
was then barred
from entering buildings
and using facilities,
even before the Green Pass;
but let us, dear Lord,
remain vigilant as ever,
for unvaccinated Whites,
especially the poor ones,
now pose the same threat
as vaccinated Iraqis
and Afghans with US passports;
alas, should the unjabbed
Whitey, however,
happen to be quite wealthy,
then we must consider
this proof of vaccination,
because gaining COVID
from Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
then dying from it
bestows both status
and upward mobility
upon the dead one,
while catching COVID
from a homeless drunk
then dying from that
is simply a tragedy—
upward mobility
without any fame.
Oh, dear Lord, we pray to heaven
that you get with the program at last
and allow just fully vaccinated
souls into your kingdom;
it would also be nice, sweet Jesus,
if you could demand
that the certificates be shown
in digital form,
with QR codes and cavity checks
and the whole nine yards, really,
for so many have already
been tempted by Satan,
and bought fake certificates
on Telegram and WhatsApp—
a clever business model
with great revenue streams,
something deeply upsetting
for the bureaucrats of Big Pharma.
On the other hand, dear Lord,
Big Tobacco may have cause
for celebration, as some studies
have shown that smoking
may help prevent COVID—
indeed, it doth appear as if nicotine
interferes with ACE2 receptors,
thereby preventing the virus
from entering cells.
Hallelujah, our Father in heaven!
We pray in the name
of your only begotten Son
that all the smokers in Kentucky
will now rise up and initiate
protests demanding mandatory puffing
measures at work, schools,
and hospitals,
but especially hospitals,
for no freedom,
and this we swear,
is sacred enough
to give up in the name of safety,
even the freedom to breathe.
Starting next week,
mandatory proof
of smoking shall
be presented
at the entrance
of every gym, restaurant,
and nursing home.
Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em, fellow brethren!
And as with vaccines,
connoisseurs of Russian cigarettes
will absolutely
be prohibited from entering
any indoor venues,
until the proper clinical trials
can be carried out;
the CDC has already
scheduled rolling reviews
to see if cancer sticks
made by former communist heathens
pose the same health risks
as those made in the free world,
because only the cancerous kinds—
the ones with arsenic,
liberty, and lead inside them
have been known to interfere
with the aforementioned ACE2 receptors.
So far, the CDC has only approved
the democratic cigarettes of Marlboro,
Newport, and Camel against the coronavirus—
in clinical trials, they’ve shown
a smashing 99 percent effectiveness
in killing people before they contract COVID,
much lower than the despotic
brands of Russia,
which have far less additives
and kill only 89 percent of subjects,
but these are just the results
of one medical study funded by Republicans;
the very same study funded by Democrats
showed that Russian cigarettes
kill people on contact,
with vaccinated Americans
from ages 0 to 100 being most at risk;
the State Department hence recommends
that anyone holding a US passport
avoid traveling to places
where this tobacco is sold—
if you absolutely must travel,
buy forty packs of Marlboro
and smoke two a day while wearing
a mask fully covering nose and mouth.
Our dear Lord, we ask in the name of Jesus
that you please forgive
all the fornicators,
thieves, and lawyers,
but especially lawyers,
for any wrongs
they may have committed,
be they sleeping with monkeys,
stealing relics from your churches,
and, naturally, defending
those who slept with monkeys
and stole relics from churches,
but solely if said miscreants
who’ve lived total lives of sin
agree to accept Science
as their only true Savior,
and receive the holy
communion of antibiotics,
and when, with glory, those sins
have been thoroughly cleansed,
shall they proceed, at last,
with the deathbed vaccination,
for the Church of Democratic Science
teaches that only sincere deathbed inoculations
can prevent the spread of COVID at funerals,
while the Church of Republican Science
asserts that COVID was manufactured in a Chinese lab
and hence can threaten only Chinese funerals—
ever since the Great Schism of Science in 2020,
questions surrounding the afterlife
remain a disputed issue in both disciplines,
all because the Church of Democratic Science
and the Church of Republican Science
couldn’t agree on the issue
of whether it was acceptable
to use unleavened jabs
for the sacrament of full vaccination;
other disputes revolved around the fact
of whether scientists could marry
or had to remain celibate,
devoting their whole lives
to the study of reproduction,
rather than reproducing themselves.
And so, it looks as though the teachings
of Democratic Science
and Republican Science
will remain at odds forever.
Dear Lord, we ask that you punish
those scholars who sell indulgences—
fake vaccination certificates, that is,
for it will take a Reformation of Science,
initiated by the one and only
Martin Luther, MD, PhD, PsyD,
with no relation to the former
Augustinian monk,
to create yet another split,
and this time in the Church of Republican Science—
it shall come to pass that doctors
will have no right
to exercise power over people
in jab purgatory,
that is those who may qualify
for vaccination exemptions,
but must show extra proof
of valid medical contraindications
to receive that holy Green Pass.
The Church of Democratic Science
sees all this as heresy,
arguing that patients
must prostrate themselves
before doctors and ask
for vaccination penance—
only this way can they be
admitted to the Stanley Cup Finals,
and also Super Bowl LVI.
The World Series, however,
is a totally different ballgame—
being America’s Pastime,
it does, unfortunately,
require not only prescribed
vaccination penance,
but also a full baptism
with either Olay or L’Oréal—
also known as a “shower”
in scientific literature;
any rituals conducted
with Russian water
and their heathen
communist products
will not be recognized as democratic,
and may result in excommunication,
but also being burnt at the stake.
For we know, dear Lord,
that Psalm 51:7
tells us to purify our sins
strictly with Purell, but perhaps also Lysol—
only, however, if there’s a shortage of Purrell,
for that is surely the superior product,
and then we will be clean;
wash us, our heavenly Father,
but just with brands
approved by American
board-certified dermatologists,
and we shall be whiter
than Russian snow.
Let us pray, dear brothers,
that neither the ACLU,
nor the Woke Apparatus
of Twitter bring
charges of racism
against the Old Testament,
and perhaps even the whole Bible,
for, certainly, African-Americans,
along with darker skinned Latinos
and Asians, have no way of cleansing
themselves to the level
of Scripture-approved
shades of White—
at most, they shall be known
as “Two or More Races,”
or “Some Other Race,”
with the US Census Bureau
very much highlighting “Other,”
for that is how powerful
and prestigious
American body washes
remain on the world stage,
so help us God.
And let us remember,
today and for all times,
Fauci 3:5, where it is so written:
Trust in the Science
with all thy heart,
and do not depend
on your own understanding—
something, dear Lord,
which is good and true,
but certainly contradicted
by Biden and Harris 14:15,
which doth proclaim:
“The simple believe anything,
but the prudent give thought
to their steps.”
For it is the spiritually unvaccinated
who remain separated from Science,
and thus tempted by Satan himself—
for, today, that devil
is not really the Devil,
but rather the embodiment
of the Christian religion,
for in Buttigieg 16:23
it is so written:
Fauci turned and said to Jesus,
“Get behind me, Satan!”
You are a stumbling block
to my Science;
you do not have in mind
the concerns of vaccination,
but merely human concerns.
And so, from this day on,
Christianity became the Devil,
for it was not concerned
with just biology and the body,
but merely human concerns.
For yes, we all know, dear brothers,
that only the communion of vaccination
can absolve us from our sins.
And as the disciples
gathered for the Last Supper
at the White House,
Fauci said: “Take these masks
and wear them, for they are my body—
made in China, of course,
and though America
is on the brink of total collapse,
we can be sure these masks
will protect us from every economic,
social, and natural danger.
He then gave thanks to China
and offered his disciples
the syringes, saying:
“Each of you inject,
for this is my blood,
which seals the covenant
between the President
and his people,”
thus it was written
in Biden and Harris 26:27-8.
And so Washington
did truly rise again
from death,
and took its vaccinated
body—with PCR tests and everything—
that which appertained
to the perfection
of Man’s American nature,
wherewith it ascended into Heaven,
and there will sitteth, until the government
returns to judge all unvaccinated Men
(and also Women, of course,
for we must certainly discriminate
against unvaccinated Women as well)
on the last day.
In the name of the Father,
Uncle Sam, and American Spirit.

 

About David Garyan

David Garyan has published three chapbooks with Main Street Rag, along with (DISS)INFORMATION, a full collection with the same publisher. He holds an MA and MFA from Cal State Long Beach, where he associated himself with the Stand Up Poets. He received a master’s degree in International Cooperation on Human Rights and Intercultural Heritage from the University of Bologna. He lives in Trento.

“American Prayer,” a poem by David Garyan, published in Interlitq

“American Prayer” was first published in Volume 10 of The American Journal of Poetry (January 1st, 2021). 

Please click here read the story behind the initiative to republish all my work lost with the disappearance of The American Journal of Poetry.


 

American Prayer

A long time has passed
since I’ve been alive;
that was when waves
convinced me
of the ocean’s danger,
when fires lit for no purpose
could feel warm,
when the composer’s ear
still heard joy in laughter,
when the cook’s tongue
never spoke a gloomy word,
when the killer’s hand
cut with the same care
as the surgeon’s,
when a mother’s eyes
could stand to watch
her children fall—
if only, for a second,
to study
the world’s pain.
Say, how do you feel naked
in a room where no one
wants to turn on the light?
How do you feel at home
when every neighbor hates you—
but only because they admire your house?
My world has become a jungle
in which I’m always in danger,
but where I feel no fear;
my thoughts have become a circus
in which I mustn’t trust
the goodness of clowns—
especially when they’re smiling.
I can no longer tell
the lions apart.
I’ve built so many cages
for myself—the wilderness
inside me has escaped;
my anger is an arsonist
happily lighting
just one candle in church—
then leaving without regret;
my depression washes
the windows of skyscrapers
without ever looking down.
The Europe I’ve known
has vanished like a prostitute
everyone wants to sleep with,
but no one cares to look for.
The America I’ve disowned
has returned like an illness
I brought upon myself.
America, I’m a smoker
trying to treat cancer
without quitting cigarettes.
Europe, I need a feminist wife,
the one who’ll obey
my every command
because she wants to—
and feels empowered
to act this way.
What’s next? Asia?
Like winter searching
for love in the mountains,
like summer trying to hide
its secret from fire,
I’ve run away from myself—
I’ve gone somewhere new
where it’s always the same,
where everyone knows
who I am because they’ve never
seen me before.
I’m giving myself away
like an artist no one can stand,
but everyone wants to collect.
The world is imposing itself
like a virgin looking to rape someone.
Every government has made
me hate the silence
of crowded libraries.
Every institution has given
me reasons to question
the shape of a question mark.
I’ve lost all faith in my prophets—
every day I laugh
at their caricatures.
My courage is a cartoonist
living in France who draws
what he wants but never
shows his work out of fear.
My cage is a religion
that tells me I’m free—
so long as I don’t leave it.
No, it’s better to bury
the words of dead
seers and their rules
all over Europe’s streets;
they resemble the abyss
you find at the bottom
of someone’s cup
when they’re drinking alone
and the bartender
will no longer serve them.
Like a terrorist
without friends looking
for a crowd,
I’ve come to hate
the happiness of large parties;
my own whiskey is sweeter
and I can’t stand the bitterness
when I’m not drinking it.
Still, I despise the smiles
of a thousand strangers.
I’ve begun admiring the mountains
like a geographer
who can’t wait to retire.
I start my prayers like poor
people who want to steal,
but don’t have the courage for it.
I watch every sunset
like an old man that knows
he isn’t waking up tomorrow.
I wait and wait for the sunrise
like a drunk woman
anxious to get a better look
at her one-night stand.
At noon, I ask myself questions—
the ones which bore
even fat philosophers
who’ve done too much
sitting and thinking.
After lunch, I think
about the loaded revolver
under my pillow,
and this makes me tired—
I take a nap and fly
myself to the next sunset.

 

About David Garyan

David Garyan has published three chapbooks with Main Street Rag, along with (DISS)INFORMATION, a full collection with the same publisher. He holds an MA and MFA from Cal State Long Beach, where he associated himself with the Stand Up Poets. He received a master’s degree in International Cooperation on Human Rights and Intercultural Heritage from the University of Bologna. He lives in Trento.

Armenian Genocide, a poem by David Garyan published in Interlitq

This poem previously appeared in Volume 7 of The American Journal of Poetry (July 1st, 2019).

Please click here read the story behind the initiative to republish all my work lost with the disappearance of The American Journal of Poetry.


 


Daniel, this holocaust is for you.
Let me burn your blank pages,
soak the ashes in history’s blood—
just to darken it.
What’s your shade of red?
Do you know its price?
Your rubies aren’t ruby enough.
The government gods
want more holocausts—
just to be appeased.
Let your books go to the fire,
along with all Armenian bodies—
is that enough works cited?
Maybe then regimes
would say “genocide,”
and Turkey could apologize—
at last … no one’s left
to demand redress,
or even an apology.
This is the only holocaust I can offer;
it’s mine and it’s not mine.

I would throw our legends
into Ծիծեռնակաբերդ—
I would set all our churches on fire,
spoil our monuments
in the blaze as a holocaust,
just to bring everyone back.
What have we done to anger the gods?
What have we done to deserve this?
And yet all will be well.
People and land are gone,
but we stood at Sardarabad.
We’re still here.
Let me tell you about those
who were with you—
some had no country then;
Slovakia and the Czech Republic
are less than 30 years old,
and they haven’t forgotten.
I’m now 31, the age when you died,
and death doesn’t scare me yet,
but when your captors raised knives,
you heard hope—
it was escaping like hummingbirds
in your lungs trying to pierce their way out.
How did you steal enough air
to express your torture,
much less breathe?
Uruguay first heard your cries,
then Cyprus, Argentina, Russia,
Greece, Canada, Lebanon, Belgium, France,
Italy, Vatican City, Switzerland, the Netherlands,
Poland, Lithuania, Germany, Venezuela,
Chile, Sweden, Bolivia, Austria, Brazil,
Syria, Paraguay, Luxembourg, Bulgaria,
and, of course, Armenia
never stopped listening.
More people will hear you.
More people will come.
Raphael Lemkin took the last breath
of each victim to beget
the term “genocide.”
This word used to be our word,
and, sadly, it no longer is;
others have died to breathe life
into this name and I wish
things were different.
The world is less innocent
with “genocide” in it.
Everyone can hear
your last breath,
but many fear repeating
what they heard:

“Genocide.”

Your final gasp is my holocaust.
Forgive me. My paper is just paper,
but this ink will reach
your grave.
Tell me—is revenge
a good thing if it feels good?
Those behind our suffering
were sentenced to death,
but they all escaped justice.
We put down
the main architects
of our plight,
and Europe’s courts
have absolved us,
but even European courts
can’t make God preside over them—
I ask that you pray
for our race when we praise
the revenge of our brothers.
Like wind scattering a torn book,
the genocide has strewn
survivors across the world.
Much of the pain
can no longer be felt,
only understood—
time has lulled
the red ink to black.
I won’t let
years and statistics
keep your blood from drying.
I won’t let wise ears
of old history
go deaf to your cries.
The poet isn’t the historian of facts.
You’re the archivist
of laughter and tears.
Inside your pen were voices
from near and distant futures.
The bard is a chronicler,
but he has hemophilia;
those who injure him
incur torment—
they must endure
the endless howls of his ink;
to kill poets is to kill one’s self—
read lines enter
the murderer’s nation
and speak to the soil—
forcing honest crops to grow there.
Denial—prisons without walls or guards
surrounded by minefields.
Denial—truth that wears gloves
when handling ethics.
Denial—hospitals that only
admit healthy people.
Denial—palm trees of regret
planted deep in the desert—
no one can reach
their dates of apology.
Denial marks moveable
feasts on calendars without numbers.
Denial blindfolds justice—
just to let killers escape.
Denial hangs a noose
in cells of the innocent.
Denial arrests the blameless,
severs their tongue and hands,
then says: “All are free to acquit
themselves of stealing and slander.”
Still, the pens we left
were picked up,
carried by righteous palms,
which saved the books
of our history;
foreign tongues tasted the lies
and stopped them like circles
trapped in a circle.
Daniel, your name
has erased the word “denial”
from the Murder Dictionary;
its authors now trudge deserts
of reason to hide from your face;
they have no ink to quench
their lexicons of shame.
The culprit lies,
claiming Armenians
were the enemy.
Have you seen such enemies
die without weapons?

The sinner boasts, claiming Armenians
were dangerous—the desert marches
served as brief transfers.
Did you know people
must be raped and starved
on long walks to a new home?

The crook twists, claiming Armenians
were the real killers.
Have you seen genocide
memorials in foreign countries
honoring murderers?



The conniver acts, claiming Armenians
and Turks were killing each other.
Have you seen a more one-sided defeat?
Can unarmed armies
lose wars this badly?

The thief hides, claiming Armenians
were better off,
and this led to jealousy.
Could it be true?
Maybe diplomas and wealth
are cause for genocide:

“The Armenians were better educated and wealthier than most Turks and because of that were envied and hated, so much so that the government instituted a program of ethnic cleansing. The Turks had had practice runs before. Between 1894 and 1896, 200,000 Armenians were massacred by soldiers and armed mobs.”
The Australian, “Geoffrey Robertson puts the case against Turkey for 1915 Armenian genocide” (2015)

Those are the accusations.
Forgive me once more.
I shouldn’t have refuted
claims that don’t deserve
our ink, or even attention,
but like revenge—
what can be wrong
often feels good.
Still, as victims,
we can’t take our red
bed sheets and pillows—
forcing the innocent
to sleep on them;
they need peace
as much as we do.
We can’t forget
the righteous;
only denial and murder
makes one a menace—
not birth alone.
Your life was a garden
where bodies were buried.
Your death is a graveyard
where strangers
leave the dead flowers.
I tried taking your tears
off this page by holding
the paper up to the sun,
but the words never dried.
Never mind.
I’ll stop writing this poem
when your life gives me one
metaphor for happiness.
You haven’t left us—
we’re archaeologists of echoes.
The desert’s breath
still speaks your name.
How can I find truth
in archives and books—
their voice is distorted
by those who keep them?
Even the white gloves
I must wear can’t silence
the racket of cities.
The poet’s truth sounds true
at first sound.
I ask you again:
What price is your red shade?
Is it higher on earth than in heaven?
They want too much for it here.
They need to measure
the pH of your blood—
perhaps it was too acidic.
They’d like to research
how far you walked
to your death—
if you didn’t walk at all,
or only very little,
you should be thankful
for the killer’s kindness.
They want to debate—
were you given
something to eat
on your death march?
Even crumbs
from a guilty hand can wipe
the blood away from its history.
They crave to count
the bodies again—
the death toll was inflated,
and statistics are very important:
One, two, three,
four, five, six, seven,
eight, nine, ten, eleven,
twelve, thirteen, fourteen,
fifteen, sixteen, seventeen,
eighteen, nineteen, twenty,
21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27,
28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34,
XXXV, XXXVI, XXXVII,
XXXVIII, XXXIX, XL,
XLI, XLII, XLIII, XLIV,
XLV, XLVI, XLVII, XLVIII …
if less than a million died,
this woman becomes a doctor
of history and data.

Those who deny,
kill the victims’ memories—
they inherit the crimes
of their ancestors.
Rest here, friend; the worst is over.
Science says you can’t
breathe underwater;
it says most lungs
can stop textbook drowning
for a minute or so;
after that the brain
turns to “D” in its wordbook—
it goes down
the terms until its own
inventions can’t rescue you.
But how is that true?
Victims can breathe
under innocent blood.

How else can God keep
a race from perishing?
Why else have history’s
sluggish eyes
never witnessed
a final genocide?
Its pages are honest,
but they can only be honest
with what they’ve seen.
Geschichte is a guest who must describe
a party where thousands
have gathered—without the time
to shake everyone’s hand.
The tongues of foreign pens
tasted our blood
and spoke the word “genocide.”
The fingers of foreign brushes
forced guilt to open its fist.
The hands of foreign lenses
led eyes to the bodies
and made them discover;
yet history had no time
to meet everyone.
Too many songs
have been orphaned in the wind’s ears.
Too much laughter has been shelved
in the library without windows.
Too much anger has traveled
inside the unaddressed envelope.
Too much hope glows
in the stained glass of lost churches.
Poets can speak the wind’s alphabet;
they can pound on doors
of libraries without windows;
they can take blank envelopes
and address them to the fire;
they can bring light
to dark mornings,
but even we can’t make
old days see a new past.
We can only wonder:
How long could history
keep its eyes open
if it had to face
each dead child,
each raped woman?
We can only fathom:
When would the objective
voice of its pages
start shaking
if it had to find every body—
just to count it?
We can only picture:
Might its cold arms
finally give up
if sources had to lead
all corpses back
to their homes?
We can only imagine:
How much blood can it stomach
before the archives throw up
truth in disgust?

Again I ask:
How much for a bard’s blood?
History is the past’s shepherd,
but its flock has become too large—
it can no longer see till the end.
There’s not enough time
to notice small losses.
Poetry is the future’s steward,
yet it’s losing the fight against time;
it wants to save all lives,
but there’s not enough paper
to hide victims under blankets of verse.
You had no time to wait for art.
When they dragged
you to the forest,
you scratched
your lines of death on the bark—
all with bloody fingernails,
until you had no biology
left to write with.
The memories of trees
live the longest.
Even if their life is cut short,
some can sprout
new stems from their roots.
The history of blood
doesn’t exist in libraries;
the ashes of wisdom
we’ve planted in our archives
can’t absorb buried voices
and carry them to the leaves—
their roots
aren’t placed in the ground.
The history of blood
doesn’t have dates—
just the symbol for infinity.
Cruelty’s extent lies
in the number of prisons,
and how we treat women,
but that’s all false.
To measure
the volume of gore,
see how many new words
we need to define massacres:
pogrom, genocide, the Holocaust.
What’s next?
Can I be wrong about infinity?
Let “Holocaust” be the last
term for plight.
What’s the difference
between one death and ten million?
Tell me, Daniel.
History opens its eyes,
weighing loss with a scale;
poetry closes its eyes,
measuring with the heart.
The Library of Genocide
is built out of mirrors;
when the past enters,
it sees its reflection,
but the Library never tells
the biographer of blood
that all mirrors are two-way—
that bards are looking
in from the outside.
Only poets can interrogate history—
only poets can bring it to trial.
Their eyes are two flashes
of lightning striking a forest at night.
Their testimony is evidence
gathered by saints.
Your son was born
on the day of your death—
a welcome blessing,
but even the bard’s
house of language
doesn’t have space
to lodge these guests together.
Your wife wasn’t afraid
to name him “Haig,”
even when the tongue
of the killer’s blade
was after Armenian flesh.
The living can’t understand
the word “genocide.”
Only victims who spilled
their lives on page “G”
of the Blood Dictionary
know the true meaning—
this is a torment your offspring
weren’t forced to endure.
Poets know where
they must dig to build wells
that will raise tears
from the ground,
but they’d rather be asked
to do harder things—
speak with the frankness
of children who are good
storytellers, but poor liars.
All kids
know what blood is,
even if they can’t say
it has an average pH of 7.40
and holds 4.2 to 6.1 million erythrocytes.
All kids
can recognize the guise of genocide,
even if it wears the friendly face
of a low number.

Bards lie—
but only like youngsters;
they steal truth from the blood jar,
but never clean their mouths.
They guide archaeologists
to buried graveyards—
no pen stops digging
when hands are cut off.
Yet, we’d rather be asked
to do harder things,
like visit decency’s drying cement
and write “forgiveness”—
before it’s too late.
If we demand with axes,
the tree of denial won’t yield
apology’s ripe fruits—
we must save the roots
after picking the red grapes.
We’re geographers who’ve lost
our homes—the land
we must study
no longer bears our names,
but even this isn’t hopeless;
it’s easier to leave
regret’s shore with torn canvases.
Rage will rage at the avalanche,
even from its own summit.
Peace will find peace in all temples.
We create our ink
like portrait painters
in diverse lands,
but each voice
has its complexion.
We can see hope
inside the stadium where love
is always the visiting team.
We’d rather answer prayers
than use dog ears
to hear faraway trouble.
We’d rather stop history from bleeding
than use a shark’s nose
to find distant blood.
We’d rather get rid of darkness
than use owl eyes
to record dark crimes.
We’d rather pave a safe
road to one village
than divine every way
leading to tyranny.
We’d rather keep one person from drowning
than find the wreckage of tragedy.
You sang quietly
in life’s rear procession;
those at the front never noticed,
until history went forward
and told us you’re gone.
They made you give up the bard
before they made you give up the ghost—
manuscripts,
every last drop of ink,
all the blank papers.
You weren’t supposed
to die as a poet—
somehow you did.
What did you manage to hide
from your captors?
Those who craft verse
get only thin veils to conceal it.
How did you smuggle your bard
out from the prison called fate?
Your lines didn’t scare them—
only one thing did:
Letting history witness
your death and having it alter
the parade of their crimes.
With a priest, your wife
retrieved The Song of the Bread,
waiting to be finished.
All it took was a bribe—
this shows how much
they feared your words,
which spoke of farmers and fields:

“It’s the sower. He is standing tall and stout
in the sunset’s rays which are like flowing gold;
before his feet are the fields of the fatherland
spreading their unlimited nakedness.”

Who can be an enemy to that?
Does this make you a traitor?

“I’m harvesting alone tonight;
my love has a love.
My pale scythe, a slice of light
from the full moon above.

I walk through dark furrows,
head and feet bare.
She’s wearing a bridal veil,
I wear the wind on my hair.

I cut through the waving wheat.
Her hair is a lake.
I shear and bind my grain
while a mourning dove wakes.”

Who, then, can kill
poets as poets?
The death of one rhyme is a holocaust.
Genocide—quilts stitched
out of all blood types.
Genocide—hourglasses
filled with victims’ ashes.
Genocide—sundials
presented to Hades.
Genocide—the devil’s red pen
correcting utopian poems.
Genocide—Trojan horses
entering towns without walls.
Genocide—equations
that always come out to 0
when people are added.
Genocide—translators
who think the word “suffering”
only exists in their language.
Genocide shoots millions
of family photos—
frames them blank side facing the glass,
then hangs each in the Museum of Hate.
Historians should ask:
What do poets call genocide?
Really? What does it matter?
If we write “death
is a room full of clocks
that only work in the darkness,”
critics will say: “You’re no expert.
And you’ve never been to this room.”
True.
We can imagine what we’ve seen,
but we can’t see what we haven’t seen.
This is my genocide and it isn’t.

I’m trying to grasp your fire
by walking barefoot
on the coals of our past.
Yet that’s impossible—
facts of time move ahead …
… sympathy’s warmth stays behind.
With each year that departs,
genocide’s heirs must go
deeper into history’s desert—
just to bring victims some empathy.
Time has eyes
in the back of its head,
but it never opens
them when surging forward.
Time has always been
the butcher’s best lawyer.
Time only buys fresh blood
at the Genocide Store;
it packs new slaughter
and stamps the good—
best before next election;
time never feels well
if history invites it
but doesn’t serve veal
genocide.
100 years is enough—
let’s feast as one
without one apology.
But we won’t let years
or even seconds
become evidence.

Centuries won’t be long enough
for killers to clean
the guilt off their words—
sell them to the world
as “brand new.”
Seconds will be too long
for the past to blink.
We’ll plant the patience
of Sequoias in our kids.
We’ll pull the weeds
from their gardens of empathy.
We’ll teach them the brain
surgeon’s sobriety—
they won’t lack
the cultivation
of winemakers.
They’ll learn harmony
from the silence of monks,
and silence from books that spout lies.
We won’t build windmills underground
just to placate cross winds.
Our breath will keep turning
pages of tomorrow’s diary.
I hear your words:

“There’s a nation on my writing table—
an ancient nation speaking to me
from this soil where dawn was born.”

We have poets willing
to plow the earth;
wine-making priests,
teachers willing to learn …
… plowing, praying, and winemaking,
librarians letting infants
cry among old books;
we have doctors
helping bury our dead,
soldiers who sing
about triumph and loss,
painters who paint
those with no name,
sculptors who sculpt
those with no fame.
How did you know this soil
was fertilized with our blood?

“Perhaps this rust-red color
hasn’t been bestowed by nature—
a sponge for wounds,
this soil drank from life, from sunlight,
and, living defenselessly, it turned red,
becoming Armenian soil.”

We’ll grow cherries
and pomegranates
until the ground dies of thirst.
We won’t fear spilling
red wine before it becomes
Christ’s blood.
Our desire is patient—like clocks
that seduce cognac;
our patience is fleeting, like thousands
of church candles lit at the same time.
Now I feel as you do:

“The chords of my nerves shiver
with a trembling that furrows
the mind to wider creative paths
than the sun-soaked winds of spring can.
And all my senses are woken up
by lips still calling for vengeance
and souls still red with wounds.”

We shall seek revenge,
but music will make
the sound of our guns.
We’ll be first to draw red,
but the shade will flow
from our Ararat Scales,
not from enemy pain.
Our poets have cartridges
filled with the past.
Revenge is a battle
that must be won without war.
The Library of Genocide
may invite killers inside,
but it mustn’t deny
them the exit to log
guilt in its own archives.
We have to fight
with antique guns until history
surrenders its centuries of apathy.
Wrath must be a bomb
that explodes when the timer
has counted to infinity.
Revenge should be blunt—
like swords owned
by heroes who’ve lost,
but care not for revenge.
Foes should be free
to deny until they find
their humanity lost;
such wars can be won.
Sharpened pens,
brushes dipped in read history—
both can cross enemy borders
without crossing their land.
My heart is a children’s library
next to a graveyard—
it has no space
for any more bodies.
Genocide is a million dead figures
of speech trying to grow crimson
clichés on forget-me fields—
yet poetry is a forget-me-not.

“Never again.” “We shall never forget.”
“Justice.” “We demand recognition.”
Unlike nations,
verse has no space
for clichés in its canons,
nor red on its flags.
We keep reading History’s
unfinished epic, Pages of Blood,
which not even Time
has the time to complete—
only humanity’s death can finish it.
I’m tired of asking:
How much for a poet’s gore?
Your heart—
a white hummingbird
cut open at night.
Your eyes—
two black panthers
caught in a snowstorm.
Your voice—
the howl of a wolf caged in a theater.
Your smile—
a bridge joining two nations at war.
Your verse—
taxi drivers
taking scenic routes,
never charging extra.
I won’t describe the shade of your red—
let people read for themselves.
The death of one person is a genocide
if you kill the only one like him.
Who, then, is the same as someone else?

We don’t want numbers.
We want to count on truth.
Only final genocides
merit pity—we want a future.
Lost homes, lost territories,
land as concession for peace—
still some claim our nation
has too much space on the map.

Invaders have passed;
the soil is a passport stamped
by a motley of fingerprints.
We never had Alexander’s empire,
America’s dreams,
China’s silk,
or Caesar,
but the Silk Road was there,
and Romans once too.
Alexander’s armies came.
Jamestown had an Armenian in 1618.
This is our scent—
a cellar full of old
books that haven’t been read;
wine forgotten
in a barrel;
a pond where mosquitos
are never disturbed;
a loud waterfall
still undiscovered;
the descent from an unclimbed mountain.
Armenia, why don’t you go away?
Just stop demanding.
We don’t want your spoiled wine—
your antibodies drying
in the desert for years.
Britain won’t dip its hands
in your mosquito pond.
Your pain is too loud,
but also too remote.
For God’s sake, we hear you,
and we’d like to reach out,
but we’re not willing
to step over “good” fences—
though the red paint is yours:

“HMG is open to criticism in terms of the ethical dimension. But given the importance of our relations (political, strategic and commercial) with Turkey, and that recognising the genocide would provide no practical benefit to the UK or the few survivors of the killings still alive today, nor would it help a rapprochement between Armenia and Turkey, the current line is the only feasible option.”
—House of Lords Debate (1999)

“The Foreign Office documents include advice in 1995 to the then Tory foreign minister, Douglas Hogg, that he should refuse to attend a memorial service for the victims, and attempts to encourage the idea that historians were in disagreement over the facts. The government refused to include the Armenian massacres as part of holocaust memorial day.”
The Guardian, “Britain accused of ‘genocide denial’ over Armenia” (2009)

“Finally, in October 2007, when the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee adopted a resolution acknowledging the Armenian Genocide, the Foreign Office wrote an alarming memorandum, expressing concern that ‘the Armenian diaspora worldwide lobbying machine’ would now ‘go into overdrive!’”
Huffington Post, “Internal Documents Reveal UK Officials Misled Parliament on Armenian Genocide” (2010)

“Genocide scholarship is one thing that the FCO have never been interested in applying to an issue they wish would go away. There is no reference in the papers to the 2007 resolution of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, which resolved that ‘the Ottoman campaign against Christian minorities of the empire between 1914-23 constituted a genocide against Armenians and the Assyrians and Pontian and Anatolian Greeks’. The FCO merely evinces concerns that the US House of Foreign Affairs Committee had resolved to recognize the events as genocide: as a result, ‘we can also expect the Armenian Diaspora worldwide lobbying machine to go into overdrive’. This is hardly the language of an impartial enquirer: the FCO had become a rather cynical adversary of the truth, or at least of a Foreign Minister ever uttering it.”
—Geoffrey Robertson QC, An Inconvenient Genocide (2014)

“The British government has a strong track record in sophistry. Since Turkey became a strategic partner in the Nineties, the Foreign Office has been honing a set of cod-legal arguments designed to deceive Parliament – and by extension the electorate – into believing that the term ‘genocide’ is not appropriate in this case. Its current position is that it will only use the label if an international tribunal has already done so. This is a nimble legal dodge, which rules out recognising almost every genocide in history.”
The Independent, “It’s pure sophistry that stops Britain recognising the Armenian genocide” (2015)

Yet, none of this is Britain;
for us it will always be
Benjamin Whitaker.
One person’s voice
can be greater than
the honored crowd’s silence.
What, then, is a life worth?
Could we define genocide
if war pushes us to the brink—
when there won’t be millions
to kill without shame?
Is the price of plasma
really based on supply and demand?
I ask you again:
What’s the difference
between one death and ten million?
Is it 1 and 10,000,000?
Tell me the numbers
don’t warrant a genocide.
Say the nature
isn’t systematic.
The math doesn’t
add up to a holocaust.
Not enough torture,
deportation, and rape.
Can’t try under Article 7
of the Rome Statute.
How long will lawmakers play
Genocide hide-and-seek?
They talk like children—
they suffer like grownups.
What else can we do?
No matter where we are,
we carry pieces of you:

“On my desk is a gift,
a handful of soil on a plate
from the fields of my fatherland.
The giver thought he gave his heart,
but didn’t know he was offering
the hearts of his forefathers as well.”

Mapmakers today never
give us much time,
but there’s still enough
soil to give every
denier a handful—
make them see its color;
they demand historical proof …
… we’ll hand them physical evidence.
Our heart is an immigrant
transplanted from its body.
We’ve built churches
in all parts of the world,
saved some back home,
died in foreign wars,
and enriched other cultures.
We’ve become Arméniens de France,
Armenian Americans, Armeense Nederlanders,
Российские Армяне, Αρμένιοι της Κύπρου,
Schweizerische Armenier, armênio-brasileiros,
 
We’ll thank the noble,
while never forgetting
our հայկական ժառանգությունը.

We’re not the prism of diaspora—
merely light going in as one nation,
and leaving as new rays.
Enemies bring defeat,
yet the language won’t fall—
reshaped by the wind’s
voice that sings
it across the world.
We’re violins crafted back home,
yet the bows that touch
us have distinct strands of hair.
Abroad, our homes search for home—
too often like sharps and flats needing
space between B and C, or E and F.

Our background can’t meet
us head-on as we walk away
from it on one-way streets;
we can gaze back and hope
our past is able to follow
at the speed we’re retreating.
Many return to the homeland as tourists—
no longer able to grasp
their first culture;
some leave full of fire,
eager to return—
only as anthropologists;
others come back let down—
they must bury memories
that haven’t died recently.
Paron Diaspora is a paper
from the old country
gone out of print.
He remembers his land
like headlines without dates.
Paron Diaspora is a sculptor
who’s cast as the outcast.
Paron Diaspora opens his
restaurants on big streets,
but the taste is too distant for locals.
Paron Diaspora walks around towns,
praising his land’s greatness—
all in perfect accent—
sometimes Southern, sometimes Boston,
sometimes Midwestern, sometimes New York.
Worry not, Daniel,
about the heart of the race;
we need unique paths
to build more roads home.
Paron Diaspora won’t forget you.
When pens won’t write,
our voice will compose;
if voices shall fail,
great minds will change key.
Enemies count on human
memory’s limits.
They say: When survivors die,
the need to remember their pain
will perish as well.
We say: We’ve buried their bodies,
but not their words.
They say: When the new
generation comes,
they’ll forgive a bit more.
We say: We’ll keep yelling in front
of the house where denial tries to sleep.
They say: When that generation goes,
it’ll be quiet—we can sleep,
at last, without guilt.
We say: Poets will turn
our shouts into songs, then whisper
them to kids falling asleep.

Remembrance is a fortress
that has never fallen.
These are my memories:
Great-grandfather,
David Davtyan, with his family.
There were 62 relatives
trying to escape.
Only 4 survived—
one of them his father, Mirijan.


(My great-great grandfather, Mirijan, in 1959. He escaped conscription into the Ottoman Army, which, during the genocide, had less to do with military service for Armenians, and more to do with the removal of able-bodied men from that population. His first wife, Rebecca, died in Iraq on a death march. He eventually ended up in Bulgaria, where the previous photo of my great-grandfather and his family was taken.)

Destroying people’s bodies
is genocide’s flesh and blood—
wrecking their past
is its very soul.
When the sharpening stone
of our past has worn out,
we’ll go to its gravestone—
dig up the echoes.
Denial has weapons?
Good. They only fire backwards.
We hear your voice:

“And I sang: ‘fight to the end.’
My pen is a burnt cigar—
an offering for you;
be brave, Armenian warriors—
I sang revenge and my voice blew
the ashes of my odes your way.”

We’ll write
the work you never
could start.
No bard can die
if one elegist
remains to keep him alive.
The writer’s time moves straight.
Though he walks to the end,
his life is a clock turned
by the hands of his readers.
Shivers, The Heart of the Race,
Pagan Songs, The Song of the Bread

we have all your books;
they won’t be lost now.
I can see your face only
on the pages,
but your voice
is all around me:

“Be naked like the poet’s mood,
for the pagan is suffering
in your unconscious,
and he won’t hurt you.”

Our bards can
witness without seeing,
hear without listening,
feel without touching,
smell without breathing,
and try without eating.
Let the denier say he can’t taste
our bitterness … time
has taken its flavor—
we’ll grant him a dog’s tongue;
let the denier say he can’t smell
our blood … the desert
has dried it—
we’ll grant him a wolf’s nose;
let the denier say he can’t feel
our pain … our children’s
skin is young and has healed—
we’ll grant him a shaman’s hands;
let the denier say he can’t hear
our cries … the wind
has taken and lost them—
we’ll grant him a cat’s ears;
let the denier say he can’t see
our past … the nights of time
have made it obscure;
we’ll grant him owl eyes;
let the denier say he can’t understand
why we speak to the dead—
we’ll grant him the eyes of a psychic.
We’re still with you:

“Tomorrow come to my grave;
as bread, I’ll place my poet’s
heart into your bag.
So long as your grief lives,
my poet’s heart will be your blood,
and the blood of your orphans.
Hungry One, come to the graveyard tomorrow!”

Perhaps I should ask again.
What are you asking
for a poet’s blood?
What’s the value if it can feed
a whole nation?
The strongest weapon
is a question no one can answer.
I’ll wield it even after
finishing this poem.
They want history?
We’ll give them poetry from the past.

They want to count the bodies?
We’ll give them a thousand abacuses
made from the victims’ bones.

Do I insult Turkishness
if I ask them to read our red poetry?
Let history decide.
Do I insult Turkishness
if I present them with those abacuses
and ask them to count the bodies?
Let history decide.

They want the past?
We want it too.
They want to juggle insults?
We’ll laugh at their circus.
They have Article 301?
We have Article 302—
“Yesterday’s Future.”
Are we to blame?
We offer to accept
the apology,
but they refuse to give it.
We can mend things—
tomorrow, even—
if they just hint
at the chance.
Still, they want to keep looking back;
they’re obsessed with the past;
they want history.
If they like it so much,
we should hand it to them:

“They have drawn from the fields the male population and thereby destroyed their agricultural communities. They have annihilated or displaced at least two thirds of the Armenian population and thereby deprived themselves of a very intelligent and useful race.”
—Henry Morgenthau writing to Robert Lansing, November 4, 1915, Constantinople, received by Mr. Lansing on December 1st
Morgenthau’s quote was obtained from the Office of the Historian, which is an office of the United States Department of State within the Bureau of Public Affairs, and it’s responsible for preparing and publishing the official historical documentary record of U.S. foreign policy.

“The dead from this wholesale attempt on the race are variously estimated from 500,000 to more than a million, the usual figure being about 800,000. Driven on foot under a fierce summer sun, robbed of their clothing and such petty articles as they carried, prodded by bayonet if they lagged; starvation, typhus, and dysentery left thousands dead by the trail side. The ration was a pound of bread every alternate day, which many did not receive, and later a small daily sprinkling of meal on the palm of the outstretched hand was the only food. Many perished from thirst or were killed as they attempted to slake thirst at the crossing of running streams.”
—U.S. Army Lieutenant General James Guthrie Harbord
General Harbord’s report comes from the U.S. Department of State Archives, presented by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge on April 13, 1920, and printed a week later by the Washington Government Printing Office.

“Any doubt that may have been expressed in previous reports as to the Government’s intentions in sending away the Armenians have been removed and any hope that may have been expressed as to the possibility of some of them surviving have been destroyed. It has been no secret that the plan was to destroy the Armenian race as a race, but the methods used have been more cold-blooded and barbarous, if not more effective, than I had first supposed.”
—Leslie A. Davis, American Consul in Harput
The consul’s testimony appears in the U.S. National Archives, doc. NA/RG59/867.4016/269

“The murder of Armenians has become almost a sport, and one Turkish lady passing one of these caravans, and thinking she too would relish killing an Armenian, on the guards’ invitation took out a revolver and shot the first poor wretch she saw. The whole policy of extermination transcends one’s capacity for indignation. It has been systematic in its atrocious cruelty, even to the extent of throwing blame for the murders on the Kurds, who are instigated by the Government to lie in wait in order to kill and pillage. Its horrors would be unbelievable if less universally attested. For scientific cruelty and butchery it remains without precedent. The Turks have willfully destroyed the great source of economic wealth in their country. The persecution is madness, but one wonders when the day will come, and if it is close enough at hand still to save the few remnants of this wretched community.”
—Lewis Einstein, American Chargé d’Affaires in Constantinople
The diplomat’s account is taken from his book, Inside Constantinople: A Diplomatist’s Diary During the Dardanelles Expedition, April–September, 1915, published in 1918.

“Like the genocide of the Armenians before it, and the genocide of the Cambodians which followed it—and like too many other such persecutions of too many other peoples—the lessons of the Holocaust must never be forgotten.”
—U.S. President Ronald Reagan, April 22, 1981
The president’s statement was taken from the official website of the Reagan Library, and was given during Proclamation 4838 – Days of Remembrance of Victims of the Holocaust.

“Today we recall in sorrow the million and one-half Armenians who were tortured, starved, and butchered to death in the First Genocide of the Twentieth Century.”
—Monroe Freedman, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council Director
The director’s statement was also taken from the official website of the Reagan Library, and it comes from a speech given on April 24, 1980.

History, history, history.
Why do we need it?
Why do we care when
we want new stories?
Our past is all over—
it’s there for all to see.
There’s no harm in forgetting old news.
Look. You can find the records.
Deniers have lost the battle for yesterday—
now they’re fighting
to take our tomorrow.
The living grow older—
the dead maintain eternal youth.
We’re not afraid of antiquity;
the artists they hung
are younger than ever.
the pregnant women they killed
keep waiting to give birth;
the children they left in the desert
remain children—
still looking for water;
the Armenianness they stepped on,
has come back—
like desert sands
that settle after a storm.
The future is all we have—
it’s a white crane
that watches from above;
when its time has come,
the feathers carrying our past
will fall from the sky,
reminding those after us
we were here;
you must’ve known this happiness
with the birth of your children,
and I shall end my poem on it.

 

***************************************************************************

Everywhere Armenian Providence

Daniel Varoujan was 31
when he was killed.
31 years isn’t a long life,
but it’s a long time
to write poetry.

***************************************************************************

A Tribute to Franz Werfel and Vasily Grossman

“This book was conceived in March of the year 1929, during the course of a stay in Damascus. The miserable sight of maimed and famished-looking refugee children, working in a carpet factory, gave me the final impulse to snatch the incomprehensible destiny of the Armenian people from the Hell of all that had taken place.”
—Franz Werfel, preface to The Forty Days of Musa Dagh (1933)

(Franz Werfel with representatives of the French-Armenian community)

 

“Never in my life have I bowed to the ground; I have never prostrated before anyone. Now, however, I bow to the ground before the Armenian peasants who, during the merriment of a village wedding, spoke publicly about the agony of the Jewish nation under Hitler, about the death camps where Nazis murdered Jewish women and children. I bow to everyone who, silently, sadly, and solemnly, listened to these speeches.”
—Vasily Grossman, An Armenian Sketchbook (1962)

(Vasily Grossman, second from the right, with villagers from Tsakhkadzor in 1961)

***************************************************************************

Links to the Articles

“Geoffrey Robertson puts the case against Turkey for 1915 Armenian genocide”
Louis Nowra (JANUARY 3, 2015)

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/review/geoffrey-robertson-puts-the-case-against-turkey-for-1915-armenian-genocide/news-story/282b552190b96a4a5a17bf38d447af57

“Britain accused of ‘genocide denial’ over Armenia”
David Leigh (NOVEMBER 3, 2009)

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/nov/03/armenia-genocide-denial-britain

“Internal Documents Reveal UK Officials Misled Parliament on Armenian Genocide”
Harut Sassounian (MARCH 18, 2010)

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/harut-sassounian/internal-documents-reveal_b_344794.html

“It’s pure sophistry that stops Britain recognising the Armenian genocide”
Alex Dudok de Wit (APRIL 23, 2015)

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/its-pure-sophistry-that-stops-britain-recognising-the-armenian-genocide-10199118.html

***************************************************************************

Thank you to my brother, Arthur Ovanesian, for suggesting key edits and providing the idea for the epilogue.

 

 

About David Garyan

David Garyan has published three chapbooks with Main Street Rag, along with (DISS)INFORMATION, a full collection with the same publisher. He holds an MA and MFA from Cal State Long Beach, where he associated himself with the Stand Up Poets. He received a master’s degree in International Cooperation on Human Rights and Intercultural Heritage from the University of Bologna. He lives in Trento.

PC, a poem by David Garyan, published in Interlitq


(DISS)INFORMATION

“PC” was first published in Volume 7 of The American Journal of Poetry (July 1st, 2019). The poem subsequently appeared in (DISSINFORMATION), published by Main Street Rag.

Please click here read the story behind the initiative to republish all my work lost with the disappearance of The American Journal of Poetry.


 

PC

Those who remember too much history are doomed not to make the same mistake twice.
—Ozka Wild

This is the jolt generation.
The surge in a crowd without reason,
powered by mental shock—
videos of riots, planes bombing buildings
played over and over again.
We must tolerate more.
We must find a cure for empathy.
The suspect jolted when he saw the police;
witnesses were shocked when they saw him gunned down.
“Officer, I’m unarmed,” were his last
recorded words; they’re about to go viral.
Quickly, 120 volts. Social media shock therapy
to cure the insanity.
We need an outlet for our anger.
We must find a cure for reason.
Hashtag the polarity;
it’s us and them—
us against them.
Yes or no? Do or die! Do or die? Right or wrong? Black or white?
We must cure the gray matter in our brain.
Practice improves reaction time due to changes in white matter.
White. White. White.
Practice reacting; do it now; do it fast.
We must find a cure for patience.
Like. Post. Share. Tweet.
The sudden shock of the terrorist attacks
has jolted us into action.
Jolt with unity.
Put French flags all over profile photos.
Raise the shock factor until it stuns us.
Tears—vestigial fluids of the new electric age.
Don’t cry—your eyes have evolved.
You can’t help a person bleeding on the screen.
You don’t have the empathy for 1,000,000 headlines.
What you see is real and not real.
Put your hands in the air.
Put your hands behind your back.
If you’re innocent, pick up the phone and shoot—
images of dead bodies, videos of planes hitting buildings.
“Officer, I’m unarmed.”
Numerous witnesses reported that the suspect
jolted right when he saw the police.
This is the jolt generation;
we need an outlet for our anger.

*

Bag and tag the bodies;
send them to the news.
Leave followers at their graves.
Send followers to their families.
We’ll do nothing about guns.
The Constitution has over 325,000,000 followers,
and it follows no one.
The 2nd Amendment has gone viral.
We must carry guns because we can carry guns.
We must load our guns because we’re free to carry them.
According to Founding Father, Anton Chekhov,
we must remove all that has no relevance to the Constitution.
If the 2nd Amendment says people have a right to bear arms,
then the arms must go off;
if they’re not going to be fired, they shouldn’t be in the 2nd Amendment.
According to Smith and Wesson’s razor,
the simplest solution to a problem is a gun.
We’re the jolt generation;
we get things done the easy way.
We repealed the 18th Amendment
because we needed to sell booze.
We can’t repeal the 2nd Amendment
because we need to sell guns.
The Constitution isn’t worth the money it’s printed on.
Mr. President, unfollow this Constitution.
We want to like something new.

*

This is the jolt generation.
We’re the new electric newspaper.
We’re in constant shock.
We don’t think—therefore, we’re not.
Not my president; not my country;
not my body; not my child;
not my problem; not my concern.
Make way for the jolt generation;
we need an outlet for our anger.

*

What’s on your mind, David?
Did you forget the password to your brain?
Someone is talking about you.
Someone is saying good things.
Someone is saying bad things.
Someone you know may know you.
Someone you don’t know knows what you did.
Someone you know has seen you.
Someone you don’t know recorded you.
Aren’t you curious who did it?
You exist in places you don’t know about.
Don’t you want to know where?
You’re someone’s friend.
You only have 100 friends.
Isn’t it time for new friends?
You know someone who doesn’t know you.
Someone you don’t know knows you.
Someone is checking you out and you don’t know it.
It’s time to check your account.
You’re checking someone out and they don’t know it.
It’s time to let them know.
Open your account; do it now. Hurry up before you miss something.
The cure for curiosity would drive us out of business.
Where are you now?
You can be in 10,000 places at the same time.
You’ve been seen, read, liked, tagged,
shared, friended, unfriended, googled, ogled, and spied on.
You’ve been undressed in 10,000 places at the same time.
You must react quickly.
You must make way for the jolt generation.
You must tell people what’s going on,
or you’ll surely go insane.
You must connect right now.
You need 120 volts.
You need social media shock therapy.
You need an outlet for your anger.

*

We want to recognize faces.
We want to know where everyone is.
We want to know where everyone is
but we don’t want everyone to know
that we know where they are.
The bank robber was described
as a black male
in his thirties who forgot
to turn off his phone,
or, at least, disable location services.
Everyone jolted when the suspect entered the bank.
The suspect jolted at the sight of police.
We need everyone to see this quickly.
We need everyone to react before they know what happened.
Everyone must jolt at the same time.
#Jolt.
Breaking News: “The suspect has gotten away
without stealing anything, but the suspect is black.”
The suspect is dangerous because he’s black.
Black. Black. Black.
KTLA wants every citizen
to make videos of the chase—
including black people, and send them to us
with the hashtag, “#YourChase,”
courtesy of Chase Bank, “Chase What Matters.”
Cut to commercial.
“Coors. Whatever your mountain, climb on.”
Back to KTLA.
We have reports that the black suspect
is hiding in the Santa Monica Mountains.
We want to remind viewers not to approach
the suspect and instead shoot him from a distance.
Now is the time to buy a new smartphone
with the 25,000 megapixel camera.
We need every picture—every picture counts,
but no selfies with the suspect in the background.
Send your pictures with the hashtag, #ClimbOn.”
Use filters, if possible, to make the suspect
appear darker than he is.
We’ll post them on the Coors page.
Get a free beer (Coors Light only) if the police
uses your post to catch the suspect.
Make way for the electric police.
Make way for the jolt generation;
we need an outlet for our anger.
Jolt with fear if the suspect approaches you.
Don’t lie down and play dead;
this isn’t a black bear.
If you’re still alive,
remember to capture the moment—
you may decide to relive
the near-death experience later.
Share with your loved ones.
LAPD will tag the bastard soon.

*

Amanda, we haven’t seen you in a while.
Do you want us to know where you are?
Do you want us to recommend good restaurants?
Do you like Italian food?
There are 5 Italian restaurants in the neighborhood.
Are you Italian?
Have you ever been Italian?
Our data tells us you must like ravioli.
We know where you’ve been.
We know what you like.
We know you didn’t like the Asian place in Hollywood.
We know you’re not a fan of fortune cookies,
but you must enable cookies.
We know what you’ll do before you do it.
Add a bio. Tell us where you live.
Find friends you don’t have.
Go on vacation just to spice up your profile.
Go on vacation to spice up your profile
and make people jealous.
Make yourself jealous.
Go to an Italian restaurant in Italy.
Take a picture of the exterior.
Walk inside. Take a picture of the interior.
Sit down. Take a picture of the table.
Call the waiter. Take a selfie with the waiter.
Get the menu. Take a picture of the menu.
Call the waiter. Point to the ravioli.
Take a picture of yourself pointing at the ravioli.
Wait for the ravioli—this is terror;
there are no more pictures to take.
The ravioli arrives.
You’re hungry for people’s jealousy.
Take a picture of the food and post it immediately.
You must react now.
You must think what other people will think.
Your body is jolting with hunger.
You must not think what other people will think.
You shall not pick up the fork until you get 100 likes.
No, you shall never pick up the fork.
You shall always be afraid of what other people think.
You’ve learned the art of discipline.
You’ve learned to be like everyone else.
You’re the master of Zen Instagram.
You must find a cure for inner peace.
You shall not eat a thing lest you get too fat
for other people’s jealousy.
Only skinny people can make others feel bad.
No more Italian restaurants, especially in Italy.
You must think what other people will think.
Carbs are good for social media,
but not for your body.
Call the waiter. Tell them there’s hair in the food—
you won’t be eating here again.
Congratulations. You’ve made free memories
and lost weight in the process.
You must not think what other people will think.
Your friends are utterly shocked—
you can eat ravioli without getting fat.
Make way for the jolt generation;
we need an outlet for our anger.

*

We need more—
more check-ins, more stories,
more action, more events,
more excuses not do what we should do.
We’re the new electric activism.
We’re louder and more trivial than ever.
We get things done the easy way.
The codes for nuclear reaction lie at our fingertips.
The meltdown is a mouse click away.
We prefer to drop hashtags all over Syria—
we would’ve done the same in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Grassroots movements are so floppy disk
we don’t know where to put them.
We have abolished the CD players of Sony and Yamaha—
2D printers are the next to go.
Our outrage is environmentally friendly;
we reduce, reuse, recycle, repost, and retweet.
We let no hate go to waste.
We’re close to finding a cure for apologies.
We hold on to every single love.
Not everyone deserves our love.
We forget nothing.
Our goal is to cure the world’s amnesia with endless hashtags.
We won’t forget you even if you forget us.
We’ll never leave you alone, even if you want us to.
We’ll always be there for you.
We must prevent people from getting amnesia so we don’t have to cure it.
We’re the new electric activism;
we prefer to do things the easy way.

*

Make way for the jolt generation;
we need an outlet for our anger.
We don’t need to cure inner peace
if millions of people can see it
and feel jealous.
The private life is dead.
The private life is dead.
The private life is dead.

 

About David Garyan

David Garyan has published three chapbooks with Main Street Rag, along with (DISS)INFORMATION, a full collection with the same publisher. He holds an MA and MFA from Cal State Long Beach, where he associated himself with the Stand Up Poets. He received a master’s degree in International Cooperation on Human Rights and Intercultural Heritage from the University of Bologna. He lives in Trento.

 

12) Tienda de abalorios: columna por María Mercedes Di Benedetto

Tienda de abalorios

por María Mercedes Di Benedetto

 

Se denomina abalorios a diversos tipos de elementos confeccionados en múltiples formas, materiales, colores, diseños y calidades. Las más de las veces, sirven sólo como ornamentación carente de valor. Así pretende ser mi columna en el prestigioso edificio cultural de Interlitq: una oferta de temas varios sin pretensiones filosóficas ni literarias, una simple tienda de abalorios y palabras.


 PORTADA DE LAS REVISTAS “MARIBEL” Y “CLAUDIA”

 

  1. EL DESTINO EN NUESTRO NOMBRE

 

Se dice que las cosas no son, hasta que reciben un nombre.

Y detrás de cada nombre hay una historia. Una historia de deseos, de frustraciones, de amor. Cada nombre posee una o más anécdotas que lo acompañan.

En los nombres propios se condensa nuestra identidad. A veces, encierran datos acerca de nuestros padres que sería bueno buscar y desentrañar, porque el nombre es una suerte de impronta que puede llegar a definir el resto de nuestra vida.

 

EL NOMBRE COMO INSTRUMENTO MÁGICO

La mayoría de las culturas expresan la importancia creadora y divina de la palabra.

Pueblos antiguos como el egipcio, y también las culturas orientales, daban al recién nacido un nombre público y otro sagrado que sólo el sacerdote y la madre (en el presupuesto de que ninguna madre dañaría a su hijo) podían conocer. Este nombre oculto era más poderoso y representativo que el nombre por el que se conocía a la persona socialmente, y su función era proteger a quien lo llevaba.

Los enemigos pueden vencerte si conocen tu nombre.

Quienes se saben expuestos a los odios y deseos de miles o millones de personas desconocidas, como  sucede con los actores y actrices muy famosos, o como los jugadores de fútbol (y esto me lleva directamente a los jugadores brasileños y a los apodos que nos impiden conocer sus verdaderos nombres y apellidos) harán bien en utilizar un nombre de fantasía (seudónimo, alias o nick) que haga las veces de escudo ante tantas energías provenientes del exterior.

 

UN NOMBRE PARA LAS TRANFORMACIONES PROFUNDAS

Muchas religiones y agrupaciones poseen un ritual iniciático por el que la persona que se integra a ellas cambia su nombre, como símbolo de su transformación en la vida: los Apóstoles en su momento, las monjas o los Papas (el actual Sumo Pontífice, nacido Jorge Bergoglio, es Francisco por propia decisión). Brujas y hechiceras también eligen para rebautizarse un nombre mágico con el que ejercer sus artes.

Es sabida la importancia de las palabras, concebidas como un reflejo del mundo inconsciente, como sucede con los fallidos o lapsus. En el marco de esta teoría, muchos psicoanalistas han prestado especial atención al nombre y apellido de sus pacientes, ya que en ellos se encuentra depositado un mandato que queda grabado en las personas, aunque ellas no tengan conciencia clara de este designio. Nombres como Gloria, Victoria, Máximo o Máxima, Esperanza, Fortuna, Salvador, expresan claramente por su significado el deseo de los padres de que sus hijos detenten esas virtudes. Llamar Segundo a un hijo lo expone quizás a no llegar a ser nunca el número uno en sus proyectos; Dolores lleva la peor parte, si la comparamos con la niña a la que nombraron Remedios, y Nadia nos recuerda irremisiblemente a la palabra nadie, casi como una negación de su existencia.

¿Qué habrá sentido consciente e inconscientemente aquella mujer que conocí, llamada Olvido? Su madre había encargado al padre que la anotase en el Registro Civil con el nombre elegido. Pero las oficinas quedaban en el pueblo, a muchos kilómetros a campo traviesa, distancia que el padre recorrió a caballo y deteniéndose cada tanto en algún almacén de bebidas, por lo que al llegar al mostrador del Registro no recordaba en absoluto el nombre convenido. Y así encontró que Olvido era el que mejor se ajustaba a la situación.

 

SÉ COMO MAMÁ O COMO PAPÁ

Los estudiosos afirman que hay un deseo narcisista del padre o de la madre al darle su mismo nombre a un hijo o hija. Una intención de realizarse a través de su descendencia. Esto generaría en el hijo, además de la responsabilidad de honrar el nombre materno o paterno, la culpa inconsciente de no alcanzar sus alturas. Se genera un peso muy grande sobre el hijo, que siente que nunca llega a cumplir con los estándares prefijados por sus progenitores.

Hay nombres que se repiten a través de las generaciones, implicando que tienen una fuerte influencia en el sistema familiar. Tal vez pertenecieron a tatarabuelos o  a bisabuelos que detentaron una gran personalidad o alcanzaron logros que sus descendientes quisieron legar a sus propios hijos.

En el caso de llevar el nombre de un ancestro fallecido, sería interesante revisar la historia de esa persona para ver si estamos repitiéndola de algún modo, o qué rasgos tenemos en común. Y sobre todo, entender finalmente que no estamos obligados a proyectarnos en él o ella, sino que podemos construir nuestra propia experiencia de vida.

Es importante, al parecer, quién ha sido la persona que nos ha nombrado. La persona que da el nombre al niño ejerce un poder sobre la vida del mismo. Si ha sido alguien diferente de los padres, el vínculo que se establece entre esa persona y el niño es como de padre a hijo. De cierta forma se ha transgredido una costumbre casi ley: que son los padres quienes eligen el nombre de su vástago. Si otra persona lo ha nombrado, es como si sus padres hubieran dado inconscientemente al niño en adopción.

No es tarea superficial analizar todos estos aspectos de nuestro nombre, ni develar su influencia más o menos potente sobre nuestra vida. Quizá investigando descubramos ciertas cargas, ciertas mochilas referentes a los deseos paternos que nos han sido impuestas sin nuestro consentimiento.

Cuando la mujer renuncia a su apellido para usar el de su esposo, o lo agrega a través de la partícula de, está verbalizando un voto de confianza respecto de esa nueva familia que va formar, abandonando la casa paterna y construyendo su propio hogar. Pero también es cierto que su rol queda entrampado una vez más en las redes del patriarcado, en las que sólo los apellidos paternos son legitimados y perpetuados.

 

LLEVAR EL NOMBRE DE UN HERMANO FALLECIDO CON ANTERIORIDAD

Este caso a todas luces priva al niño de su identidad propia, ya que en él se encarnará por siempre el  recuerdo del niño anterior. Los entendidos afirman que el así nombrado  verá su existencia bloqueada por un “cadáver”. Mientras tanto, los padres han conseguido aliviar así el dolor del duelo, replicando o “resucitando” al muerto en el siguiente hijo.

Recuerdo estar cursando el 4to. año de la escuela secundaria. La compañera que se sentaba delante de mí falleció en un accidente de aviación. Todos acompañamos sus restos hasta el cementerio local, donde con sorpresa vimos que otra lápida tenía sus mismos nombre y apellido: su hermana mayor homónima también había fallecido  a temprana edad.

 

LA MARCA DE LOS AÑOS

Los nombres constituyen una marca generacional. Podemos definir la época de las Graciela, Marta, Susana, Mabel, Edith, Mónica, Beatriz, Adriana y los Roberto Carlos, Mario, Héctor, Rubén, alrededor de los 50s y principios de los 60s.

Por supuesto, son muy anteriores a la cercana época de los Lucas, Leandro, Gonzalo, Ezequiel, Matías y las Yamila, Romina, Melisa, Florencia.

Ambos grupos son posteriores al tiempo de los José, Juan, Pedro, Vicente, Antonio, Hilda, Carmen, Amalia, Herminia, Matilde.

A principios del 1800, con reminiscencias españolas y católicas, era común encontrar nombres como Visitación, Asunción, Consolación, Natividad, Concepción, Domingo, Manuel, Francisco.

Hoy, al menos en Argentina, los nombres propuestos se bifurcan entre aquellos aportados por los pueblos originarios, sobre todo mapuches y quichuas: Inti, Malén, Nahuel, Tupac, Suyay,  y los de origen anglosajón, como Brian, Kevin, Dylan, Wendy, Melody. La apertura en temas como la sexualidad y la autopercepción ha generado el cambio de nombre en los documentos de identidad e incluso ha abierto la difusión en internet de listados de nombres neutros para recién nacidos, sin sexo estereotipado ni género evidente. Por otro lado, el tema de la supresión de la identidad de bebés ocurrida en Argentina en tiempos de la represión militar iniciada en 1976 es una herida sin cicatrizar y una deuda que aún no ha podido ser del todo saldada.

LOS ESPERPÉNTICOS NOMBRES DEL SANTORAL CATÓLICO

Hasta no hace mucho, era costumbre elegir el nombre del niño o la niña guiándose por el Santo, Santa, Beato, Beata  o advocación de la Virgen que coincidiera con su fecha de nacimiento. Esto dio lugar a la profusión de nombres tales como Hugolino, Protógenes, Abrúnculo, Emerenciana, Teodolina o Sinclética.

Cierta compañera mía de colegio secundario confesó una vez tener un pariente nacido un 1ero. de enero. Como en el almanaque del santoral no aparecía ningún nombre honroso, sino un escueto “Feliz año nuevo”, decidieron que así sería. El Registro Civil no les aceptó el Nuevo, por lo que el niño se llamó Feliz Año a secas.

Los nombres de ángeles o santos y santas generalmente se eligen como modo de protección ante peligros o enfermedades, un sello divino que además pretende comprometernos a llevar una vida honesta, altruista, de buenos sentimientos y acciones correctas.

 

AQUELLOS NOMBRES DE NOVELA…

De alguna manera, el nombre actúa desde los padres como una herramienta de “magia simpática”: se espera que el niño se parezca a los mayores de la familia, o a algún ídolo o personaje importante, admirado por alguno de los progenitores.

He sabido de nombres como Marcelo, Grace o Irene, porque sus padres eran admiradores de Mastroianni, Grace Kelly e Irene Papas. Y ni qué hablar de los miles de Diegos que nacieron a partir de nuestro Nro. 10, Maradona.

Muchísimos Renato, Valeria, Laura, Andrés, Rolando, recibieron sus nombres por los personajes protagónicos de telenovelas de la época.

Conozco mujeres a quienes han nombrado como las exitosas revistas para la mujer: “Maribel” y “Claudia” (en este último caso, la niña ya había nacido y pasaban los días sin que decidieran que nombre ponerle, hasta que cayó en manos de la madre la revista Claudia y logró desempantanar el asunto).

En épocas en el que el radioteatro hacía furor, existía en Argentina el Teatro Palmolive del Aire. La madre, amante de los melodramas, de los que no se perdía ni un solo capítulo, intentó anotar a su hijo Palmolive (en realidad, una marca de jabones de tocador que auspiciaba el ciclo radiofónico). En el Registro Civil sólo le permitieron, a regañadientes, un decoroso y apocopado “Palmo”.

También se dieron algunos casos menos románticos como una mujer llamada Patricia, nombre elegido por su padre y perteneciente a una yegua ganadora en las carreras de aquel momento.

 

EL SECRETO QUE ENCIERRAN LOS ANAGRAMAS

Reconocidos psicoanalistas han sostenido que si bien a veces los mensajes son más o menos claros (como en los nombres Soledad, Dolores, Gloria, Salvador, etc.) otros están ocultos en las letras que estos nombres contienen, sólo que en forma de anagrama.

Los anagramas se realizan cambiando el orden de las letras que forman una palabra o frase, con el objeto de formar otras palabras o frases. El ejemplo claro es la palabra AMOR, que puede leerse como ROMA, MORA, ARMO, OMAR.

El anagrama de nuestro nombre puede descubrir un mensaje interior asociado a nuestra vida, una serie de palabras llamativamente significativas que pueden ayudar a definir quiénes somos en realidad.

Conocí un hombre llamado Anele, nombre inexistente creado por el profundo deseo de su madre de parir una niña a la que llamaría Elena. La alquimia de los cromosomas no le dio el placer de cumplir su sueño, pero entonces nombró al hijo varón Anele, es decir, Elena, leído de atrás hacia adelante.

Un profesional de los micrófonos que ha dedicado toda su vida a conducir programas de radio, popular en los medios por su trayectoria ininterrumpida, lleva por segundo nombre AIDOR, un anagrama de la palabra RADIO.

También hay combinaciones que se descartan por razones obvias, como llamar a un hijo Lope Dante o a una niña Débora Dora.

 

ESCLAVOS DE NUESTROS NOMBRES

En los nombres propios se condensa nuestra identidad, por lo tanto, la repetición de un nombre a través del árbol genealógico produce e induce a una serie de sucesos repetitivos en todo el sistema familiar.

Algunas personas “se despegan” del nombre impuesto, y eligen para sí otro con el que se presentan en sociedad, rebelándose contra las decisiones familiares. Seguramente quienes están leyendo esta columna ahora, conozcan personas que utilizan diariamente un nombre que no coincide con el de su documento. Mi suegra, nombrada Rosa, era llamada por todos Aída; dos amigas a quienes durante años conocí como Sandra, resultaron no serlo en el documento de identidad: el famoso “me llamo X, pero todos me dicen Z”.

El nombre elegido por uno mismo, seguramente nos representa más y estamos más felices con él que con aquel otro  impuesto oficialmente. Roberto, un amigo, me cuenta: “mi tía tenía 47 años en 1930, había llegado de Galicia al puerto de Buenos Aires. Cuando tuvo que registrarse en el Hotel de los Inmigrantes aprovechó para cambiarse el nombre, del cual había renegado toda su vida: María Esclavitud. A partir de entonces se convirtió en Rosa María”. ¡Qué liberación habrá sentido esa mujer, quien desde ese momento en adelante ya no sería esclava de su nombre! ¡Y qué poético transmutar la esclavitud en una rosa!

 

FINALMENTE…

Los más espirituales o sensibles podremos realizar algún ritual según nuestra creatividad e intuición para agradecer o conjurar el nombre recibido y tal vez exorcizar sus fantasmas o su legado no exento de fatalidad. Quizá podamos buscar la etimología de un nombre que nos refleje e interprete, y echarlo a rodar entre nuestras amistades y afectos, a fin de que su vibración crezca y termine por imponerse.

Los más pragmáticos, en cambio, podrán llevar adelante los trámites correspondientes para cambiar su nombre en el documento de identidad.

Cualquier metodología resulta válida para ratificar la energía que nos nombra, o para quitarnos el peso de una carga indeseada.

El nombre nos representa.

Adelanta con su solo sonido la imagen de alguien, evoca un sentimiento, un significado, una síntesis de quiénes somos.

A través del nombre se nos reconoce.

El nombre permanece.

Y atraviesa el tiempo después de que ya no estamos físicamente.

 

 


María Mercedes Di Benedetto (Photo: Mauricio J. Flores)

Biografía 

Argentina, egresada de la carrera de Guionista de Radio y Televisión (ISER), ha sido docente de esa casa de estudios y  de institutos terciarios y universidades en las carreras de “Locución Integral”, “Producción y Dirección de Radio y Televisión” y  “Guion de Radio y Televisión”. Durante 20 años fue docente en escuelas medias en Lengua y Literatura y en talleres literarios y de periodismo.

Especializada en la investigación del radiodrama en Argentina, lleva editados tres libros sobre el tema, el último en 2020, “HISTORIA DEL RADIOTEATRO NACIONAL”.

Autora y docente de ficción radial, recorre el país brindando seminarios y talleres sobre el tema, dirigidos a docentes y público en general, a través del Ministerio de Educación y de ARGENTORES.  Sus obras se han emitido por radios nacionales e internacionales.

Ha recibido numerosos reconocimientos por sus obras teatrales y radiodramas; ganadora del Fomento INCAA  con su documental de cuatro capítulos para televisión “Artesanos del aire / Historia del Radioteatro Nacional”. Obtuvo el 1er premio en la convocatoria 2004 para radioteatro del Centro Cultural R. Rojas de la Univ. de Buenos Aires UBA, además de cinco Premios Argentores a la Producción Autoral, ganadora también en 2020 en la convocatoria del Instituto Nacional del Teatro con su radiodrama sobre la vida de la soprano Regina Pacini.

Con un profesorado en Historia inconcluso, ha escrito más de cuarenta docudramas y obras de teatro para sus ciclos “Mujeres de la Historia Argentina” y “Hombres y Mujeres con historia”, presentados en diversas salas del país.

Su obra para niños “Las Hadas de la Tierra Encantada”  ha salido en gira nacional abordando temas como la ecología  y el cuidado del medioambiente. El elenco, convocado por la Secretaría de Medioambiente y por el Ministerio de Cultura de la Nación recorrió 23 provincias brindando funciones en forma gratuita para escuelas de todo el país.

Ha participado como expositora en diversos Congresos de literatura y de medios de comunicación y en Bienales internacionales de Radio, así también como Jurado y Tutora de Proyectos en certámenes nacionales de literatura y de Arte Joven. En septiembre 2022 integró con su ponencia el Symposium por los 100 años del Radiodrama Internacional organizado por la Universidad de Regensburg, Alemania.

En los últimos años ha presentado en Madrid  obras para Microteatro: “Comer por amor”, “El día del huevo”, “Testamento” y “Viuda Negra”, con dirección de Marcelo Díaz.

Actualmente se desempeña como Secretaria del Consejo Profesional de Radio de ARGENTORES, Sociedad General de Autores de la Argentina.