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THE ARMENIAN ALPHABET
Alan Semerdjian, In the Architecture of Bone, Genpop Books, 2009

for Mesrop Mashtots

1. Font

It is not simple mathematics
and symbols, not just
characters on a page. Language
is an almanac.

My alphabet is a crew of dolphins,
a verdict of slanted joshua trees
in transmission,
in ocular mistrust of neighbor,
from the bellies of which spark sharp green fragments
and cadaverous song.

My alphabet is a tank of definitions
foliating like apricot leaves.
It haunts the hinting of its crescents,
the spaces that ellipse themselves
to ceiling of planetarium
to the nebulous of memory,
brazened photographs’ tapestry.

My grandfather taught me how to swim
with onions on his tongue.

I pried the index of his fingers free
to inked palms and shells of thumbs.

I was bent inside my mother
until they cut her open.

Someone told me four blind mice
lay down in somersaults across my name.

They each had a story to tell
about my mutation.

2. Forensic Knot Analysis

Then, they taught me how to tie my shoes,
this band of migrant characters:
Monkey’s Fist, Sheetbend
Round Turn, Turk’s Head,
Prussick, Diamond
Rodi, Half-hitch.
One is a snake charmed in the grass.
One is a kneeling buddha,
one, directions for angels, and
another, a rabbi lost in Williamsburg.
One is the captain of the
Harvard crew team.
One, a plowing tool.
There are llamas and cranes,
two swans on a lake,
kangaroos with celtic staffs—
workbooks of people—in my alphabet.
They parade around the incensed corners
of my life freezing in tangled poses when I dare to look.
A musketeer’s ostrich plume hat—
tricorne cocked,
pomegranate seeds, halva manifested,
all a turn of the lip around the word
asvadtzim, my god. Jigsaw minded composition,
theater of angles, the soft script of candle and flame
alive in a night about to breeze,
alone on a page of resurrections,
you are the desert wizard in a sandstorm
conducting last dances of secret evening
gatherings of ink.

credits

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

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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.
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