"Emergency Poem-Prayer for My Brother" / "Fish & Quips" / "Critical Care" by Lory Bedikian
Emergency Poem-Prayer for My Brother
Wake him up. Eyes and vocal c(h)ords and brain.
Wake him up. No, not with the unending brouhaha
of elected figures once again turning ideologies
into false theologies, not with the surplus shelved
from family folklore, from lifetimes of war stories
bringing it all into focus, that we could have had
happier, fulfilling (watch the words you use because
someone may actually be listening), existences if
daddy time existed, if mommy had collected more
friends over coupons, if and when the amount
saved was not lied about, wait-for-it may be a slang
phrase, but I absolutely adore that it was invented
because I need it now, so wait for it, wait for the
truth to slowly become the IV drip of this poem,
because I’m not sure if money is the root of our
problems, but absolutely in agreement that money
is at the root of most villainy, but I think it goes
deeper, further back, it goes into a realm known
only for the sound of locomotion that wickedly
enters a forest that was minding its own business,
which could mean that comas come from hell,
and one doesn’t have to believe in heaven or hell
to see either, meaning perhaps when a brother
becomes unconscious much may be going on,
so at first maybe he can’t come back to us because
something might be rearranged simultaneously,
cerebrally, semantically. Brother, can you hear
any of us when we speak to the air floating
above this forlorn, mechanical hospital bed?
Brother, I remember how you and I would drive
to pick up mom from her department store job,
listening to some cassette tape you popped into
the stereo’s mouth, some radio song meant
to stop us from talking to each other and now
we’re looking for words to come out of your
mouth, words like the ones that were either
hurtful or profitable or perplexed, English,
Armenian, some in various dialects because
you wanted to show diplomacy to people who
could care less. And one day, one day that I’ll
never know the origin of, you found out that
you could paint your way out of the freeway
thoughts, the teleconferencing, communications,
business meetings, seminars, sales, margin,
gross profit, net profit, profit, profuse, profane,
your poor paintbrushes alone in a bruised cup.
Your poor fingers alone on your side, wired,
connected to blood-support, how we try to
support this day we never saw coming. How
I want him to wake, ask me what I think
of his new still life, and heartless as I am I say
put something in it that can change us all.
Fish & Quips
A coma is like a barracuda.
I will repeat myself until I feel
a bit better than yesterday.
A barracuda swims toward what to devour.
Using a simile when all else falters
is not a crutch, cannon or crevice,
it’s faith, not only in poetry, but word-ecology.
A barracuda is like a coma because it preys
on the smaller fish, the ones defenseless
delicious enough to chase. I may be losing it.
I may not be able to pull through another
one of these weep until the tissue box
looks like his upper lip when I wacked the brute
for not letting go of my arm when I said let
my arm go before I whack your face.
My brother would like a title that’s silly, unassuming,
informal, annoying to those that overthink
everything until it is beyond overcooked.
So, this one’s for you, Varouj. Fish and quips. Ya, ya.
You’re smiling. You love the idea of something
that sounds like an item on the pub’s menu.
How you have always loved food. Mom’s okra stewed with
garbanzo beans, tomato paste, garlic, lemon and
who knows or cares what else. I told you
once you’d be happier as a chef than as a communications
agent shuffling calls, numbers and the dividends
of computer screens and their cyber skulls.
Maybe tomorrow I’ll bring you a string of dried sujukh,
the aroma will either piss people off or make you
remember matchboxes, kerplunk, batman
on the edge of Ararat’s wooden replica. Mom with an apron
mending Dad’s snagged collar before Sunday’s service.
Her tummy swollen with child. You wondered
how long it would take for the choreg (sweetbread) to rise
so you can just have a little something sweet
before the day rolls out its dark ocean.
Following a dream is tiring. I want to tell him that
but he has closed his eyes again. They say people
in this state — with specialists, nurse
practitioners, attending physicians, chaplains, social workers,
respiratory therapists, trauma teams, discussing — with
eyes closed, can hear almost everything.
Critical Care
A patient advocate can be a piranha.
A piranha is not exactly like a barracuda,
but we think of both in the same instance.
It could be the act of devouring, the concept
of the fish kingdom, but I’m thinking ferocious
loss, mistaken identity, glint.
Sort of like coma and death
or simile and metaphor
or darling and painting. Well,
nobody said this was a perfect moment.
How we’ll do almost anything to bring
someone back. To make them themselves again.
We drove to pick Mom up from Montgomery Ward.
No commission that night. The stupid couple spent three hours
looking at the sofa sectional then left. My brother wishes
Mom would shut up. My brother’s little orange two-door.
Doobie Brothers, without love where would you be now.
Remember when you said forgive me
for everything from our childhood?
My unbelievable facial reaction.
My therapist said it would make me feel better.
I say Sure, fine, you’re forgiven.
Now that you sleep with eyes open, I forgive you the most.
A sister is like a mirror.
Or a mirror is like a metaphor.
Or comas and swinging doors and similes and wrecks and clipboards and brothers and barracudas are all the same.
In the name of the father and the son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
When I was very young you stood on an altar singing sharagans.
You were always on some sort of altar even without the church.
Sometimes we forgive when we run out of comparisons.
My brother is like my brother.
And my childhood is a secret.
Lory Bedikian
Lory Bedikian’s second book, Jagadakeer: Apology to the Body, won the 2023 Prairie Schooner / Raz-Shumaker Book Prize in Poetry, published by the University of Nebraska Press. Her first collection, The Book of Lamenting, won the Philip Levine Prize for Poetry. Her work received the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry and is included in the anthology Border Lines: Poems of Migration, Knopf, 2020. Bedikian has received grants from the Money for Women / Barbara Deming Memorial Fund and was chosen to be part of the 2024 Poets & Writers poetry publicity cohort. Bedikian teaches poetry workshops in Los Angeles and elsewhere.
Headshot: The Light Committee
Photo Credit: Staff