New poetry from Arpine Konyalian Grenier, taken from her recent manuscript Silk to Maidan Complicit

He taps numbers on the dance floor or ice or

on top the mountain at contested terrain

as we contend with how merciful

long division has been

 

          how tapping stripped it all over time

 

tap tap yak yak having criminalised the swooning

we all craved still but secretly as the slide rule

still breathes in complicit dumpsters

having had a peek at Hanyu

 

                        he’s grinning and in tears

 

he has been on the Silk Road for years now

liquid silk the commentator called it

feel it deal it heal heal

Leopardi had said

 

beware of words like success and failure

the well lived life otherly beguiled

tuck and all the rise to stretch

plead and flag memory

 

          then punch and settle the minuscule hobblers

 

thinking a saying clouds saying pinned inventories

star or starling uploads and seasoned memories

the litany of private parts and wishes

the appraisal of half lives

 

the blink the blur the smudge the grab

the rebellion of tears and waits

a prayer and branches

 

          yell yell they yelled for prairies and stability

 

I could not.

 

Arpine Konyalian Grenier was born and raised in Beirut after the post-Ottoman era induced French rule of the region ended. The Silent G is her next volume forthcoming from Corrupt Press. Recent work has appeared in Journal of Poetic Research, Tammy and Barzakh. She lives and writes in Los Angeles