Lit Mags
Finding My Voice Was Not on the Syllabus
Three poems by Jen Siraganian
Finding My Voice Was Not on the Syllabus
How to Use a Mouth
At eighteen, I listened into the blackness
of a headset as classmates whispered
about the hunger to die or a scarlet realization
she never said yes the previous night.
Back then I believed I could help people.
Forty hours of crisis hotline training,
I thought I was mastering something.
Did I stop vomiting dinners of Lucky Charms
in basement bathrooms? No, I spooned
my emptiness into no one.
This week, my old campus on the news,
students building protests with tent poles.
Spilling flags across the same damp grass
where I drank Boone’s, smoked cloves, and slept.
I was only on Butler Lawn for one night.
I wasn’t radical. The university hosted
a sleepover for incoming students
to demonstrate the safety of New York.
Our parents received letters promising
extra security, cameras, spotlights. My rebellion –
a stomach growl from my sleeping bag.
Why didn’t I use my mouth to snarl
instead of singing my fear of Freshman Fifteen
into dark toilets?
My mother says, if you were there, you would be
protesting too. Yes, I respond, but when
the NYPD arrived, I would have run.
Where Exactly Is Armenia?
Click to enlarge
Holes
I used to visit a woman
in Berkeley who placed
her hand on my spine
to seek my sadness. Her
room warmed with listening.
The Israeli president
announced, “we
remember the Armenians.”
It doesn’t take much
to displace a people.
Ask me about the fences,
shredding of flowers.
Count dream-slivers,
each bullet in a mouth.
The woman’s fingers swam
in the dark ocean of my back.
I still sing from the holes.
