Decalogue
A revolving door rotates smoke, water, fire;
the smell of gunshot, bed sweats, a secret affair.
I am a housewife and a mother of three,
a Bengal tiger has fallen in love with me.
I am discussing saffron with Elvis while dressed
in a bejeweled gown at the post office.
A wisdom tooth floats in my green tea.
Mother is a card shark and grows a white beard.
I accept an award in high heels and pink knickers,
then fall off a cliff and almost land in the breakers.
Then give birth to a red dove that speaks Japanese,
she’s the Virgin Mary who coos please please.
An invisible bullet enters my stomach.
I reach in and pull out the seed of a pomegranate.
A man enters, a frog prince, a klepto, a Jew,
fever-starved kisses like purple dew.
I’m lost in the streets of a love poem by Eliot;
the air is yellow; the streets are immediate.
My fingerless hand against a full moon
is now a bloody sheet, now a headstone.
Armine Iknadossian lives in Glendale, California and teaches high school
English. 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.
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