BEIRUT BLUES

	By Armine Iknadossian


	  Remember the curtains Mother?
	How they wrapped their arms 
	around the sofa on windy days,

	  how the blue-tongued ocean below our window
	licked the painted toes of French tourists in bikinis?

	  Remember tea parties on the balcony,
	the red dress you sewed for me
	right out of the latest issue of Burda magazine?

	  And then the missile's cry,
	how its whiny trajectory fooled us

	  as it lit up the summer sky during rooftop dinners.
	They weren't for us, were they?

	  But that day we hid behind the sofa, 
	you and I, they were for us that day,
	the day we ran down the stairs

	  to the damp and dim below,
	down where death could not reach

	  and the breath of life was quick at our feet.
	I remember more,
	but let's talk instead about

	  the dancing curtains, the wide mouthed sea,
	porcelain tea cups and Father coming home.


--
Armine Iknadossian was born in Beirut, Lebanon and raised in Pasadena,
California.  She received her BA from UCLA and an MFA from Antioch
University Los Angeles. She has just completed her first manuscript,
Gnosis. Publications include Pasadena City College's Inscape, UCLA's
Wisteria, Cal State Northridge's Edges, Lounge Lit: An Anthology of
Poetry and Fiction by the Writers of Literati Cocktail and
Rhapsodomancy and zaum. "The Return" was a finalist in Backwards City
Review's annual poetry contest.