~ Delta Poetry Review ~

Krikor Der Hohannesian

Lowness

is what you notice first,

a fleet of wheelchairs adrift

below the waist of the horizon,

lost ships in a sea of dementia,

the grey-tiled ceiling pressing

down, down like pea soup fog,

zero visibility in a lost world.

They are the derelicts

washed up on unfamiliar shores,

sea and storm-battered hull slats,

once sea-worthy, decayed

to worm-eaten driftwood.

They are the scrub beach pine

bent low against the wind with

nothing to break the howl.

Gnarly, brittle branches —

arms, legs, fingers, toes,

rough-barked faces,

blood sap at a trickle,

feeble barriers against

the winter of mortality.

One keeps struggling to rise,

like a horse with a fractured fetlock,

the pure instinct to keep moving.

The white-coats push him

back down, strap him, but

lowness is not for him.

He totters back up, a whinny

of protest, and you think,

so what if he falls?

Let him die trying

what he still knows.

Waterford Life Care Center

The Flower and the Candle

Sometimes in dreams, sometimes

in hazy reverie, in those feeling

adrift spaces they appear side by side

like offerings to appease the dark gods

of despair, as buffers against the siren call

of isolation, sentinels against the flight

of the spirit, the dread of mortality. The vase

of ranunculus, tight-lapped petals

pigmented yellow-orange, a medley of

all the sunrises and sunsets since earth-time

began. And the candle, pomegranate

red, its tenuous flame dancing in rhythms

at the whimsy of each puff of air, waxen

blood the melt of its own heat, the ebb

of its own life dripping, pausing, yet

inexorable. The flower always,

always bending toward the light,

the warmth, the promise of life. 

Sometimes the candle flickers out,

a mean incubus haunts the air,

ghouls of the dark side fill the void.

      I reach out to relight it, the flame dances again.

Or the flower wilts, petals drop one

by one, a shedding of yellow tears,

a stalk sucked dry of life’s juices.

      I give it water and its thirst is quenched.

When the day comes that I move on,

it will pass to others. The candle will

be kept aflame, the flower will have water

until the day all our suns finally flare out,

a circle completed, perfectly round.

Mr. Bojangles, Dance

Another dawn on the front stoop

awaiting the ribbon of blue like

no other blue. In the east, Mars and

Venus suspended in indigo. Anticipating

the mockingbird’s symphony —

trills, warbles, long fugues

ushering the day on cue.

          Waiting

with a cup of coffee and a cigarette

for the morning paper.

                         And waiting

for Mr. Bojangles in his baggy pants

and worn out shoes, only he doesn’t

dance … he shuffles, shoulders

drooped, hands clenched behind

hunched back, beaky nose dead ahead,

a starved bird scenting for grubs. Eyelids

half-shuttered against despair, a life

of circles folding back on themselves.

                                    Waiting months on end

for a glimmer. And one morning

by God he cocked a wild left eye at me,

his daring uncaged just this once.

Krikor Der Hohannesian’s poems have appeared in over 250 literary journals, including The South Carolina Review, Atlanta Review, Louisiana Literature, Connecticut Review, Comstock Review and Natural Bridge. He is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, author of two chapbooks: Ghosts and Whispers (Finishing Line Press, 2010) and Refuge in the Shadows (Cervena Barva Press, 2013), as well as a full-length book, First Generation (Dos Madres Press, 2020). Ghosts and Whispers was a finalist for the Mass Book awards poetry category in 2011. Email: krikorndh@verizon.net