Finding My Voice Was Not on the Syllabus

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.