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Poem By Alan Semerdjian

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GRANDCHILDREN OF GENOCIDE
Alan Semerdjian, In the Architecture of Bone, Genpop Books, 2009

We think of bombfields and big when we think of genocide.
We think of mass cleansing. We think in holes. We think
the whole page. We think what’s under it, what they’ve been
covering up. We think there might have been people
in those whole pages.

We think of chambers when we think of genocide. We think
of people crying. We think of people climbing. We think of
people climbing and crying, crying and climbing. We think of both
people climbing and people crying. We think in chambers.
We think in those horrible chambers when we think of genocide.
Those horrible 20th-century chambers.

When we think of genocide, we don’t think of mountains and deserts.
We don’t think of bazaars. When we do think of them,
we don’t think of young democratic people and pomegranates.
We don’t think of young democratic people with pomegranates
at bazaars when we think of genocide. We don’t think of them
next to our grandfathers. We don’t think next to them.

Then there are young democratic people who don’t eat pomegranates
and don’t think of genocide. We don’t think of them either.

We don’t think of them when we think of genocide, but we do think
of moustaches. We don’t think of long and lovely moustaches,
but we think of moustaches when we think of genocide.

When we think of genocide, we think of families. We think
of faces of families, but we don’t think of birth. When we think
of birth, we don’t think about babies. But we do think of mothers.
When we think about genocide, we do think about mothers.
But we do think of mothers, but we don’t think of women.
We don’t think of women dancing.
We don’t hear the music when we think of genocide.
These things we think about and do not hear when we think about genocide.

And we don’t think of civil war as genocide. We hear about it.
We don’t call in enough with such information.
We think about reconciliation, but we don’t
think about reconciliation when we think about genocide.
We don’t study the memorials, we don’t explain the play in papers,
we don’t shake hands and make up. When we think of genocide,
we do other things with our hands.

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from The Serpent and The Crane, released April 24, 2020

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Aram Bajakian image

Aram Bajakian New York

The music of guitarist, composer and educator Aram Bajakian has been called “a masterpiece” (fRoots, July 2017), “shape- shifting” (FreeJazzCollective, January 2017), and “astonishing” (Georgia Straight, March 2017).
He has toured extensively with Lou Reed and Diana Krall, and is on three Tzadik albums with the band Abraxas performing the music of John Zorn. ... more

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