Poet/playwright Shahé Mankerian spent
his formative years in Beirut, Lebanon.
After migrating to the United States, he
received his graduate degree in English
from California State University, Los
Angeles. In 2003, he won both the Erika
Mumford Prize and the Daniel Varoujan
Award from the New England Poetry Club.
Recently, Edifice Wrecked nominated his
poem “She’s Hiding My Keys” for the 2004
Pushcart Prize. In 2005, his play Vort
(Worm) was adapted into a short film; it
premiered at the Silver Lake Film Festival
spring of 2006. Recently, his play “Little
Armenia” debuted at Hollywood’s
prestigious Fountain Theatre.

Captured



My mother did not

always have Medusa hair.



The black and white

photograph before marriage

shows mother smiling,

content, with darker hair,

with generous lips,

her eyes in focus.



This is mother

before marriage,

before 1964,

before my father

serenaded her in jazz clubs

all along the rocky seashores

of Rouché.



This was mother

with no children,

with no peacock husband,

no war in Lebanon.

This was she

with bruisless neck

and tumorless breast.



This was a woman my age.

She did not drive.

She walked,

shooting dust on peacocks.

her head erect,

not tilted nor dyed.



This is a woman

I did not know,

existed once

before this picture,

smiled

and was captured.







Chloe Comes Quietly


She has the moon

in her suitcase.

When she’s in my room,

she lets it out.



I would like to skip

my sleep and watch

the moon rise.



She stands on my bed,

slices the moon

into half –

I’m exaggerating.



Her fingers play

shadows against the wall.

“Can you see the cat?”

she asks.



And I focus

on the shadows I see,

the Chinese landscape,

the rice fields,



the waterways,

the reeds,

and the moon rising

out of her suitcase.







Love Is Like



a paraplegic struck

by a speeding ambulance.

When he pounds the hot

pavement, he watches

his wheelchair roll down the hill.



Love is like an old

man with a walking stick who bangs

into the wheelchair right

when he’s about to lose

his balance. He rests comfortably  



on the worn leather of the chair.

Meanwhile, the paraplegic lifts

himself at the hilltop, as if Christ

from the clouds motions him to

walk. And he walks



deftly on the island that divides

the standstill traffic. Love is

like the speeding ambulance that parks

in front of the picket fence. It is

the paramedic that runs through the open



door of his own house, sees

his wife reclining on the sofa,

anticipates, smiles, as if

she has no plans to rinse

the dirty dishes in the sink.







Shortest Distance in Beirut



Turn left, always left.

There might be the butcher’s

cow tied to a tree.



Hassan loves his cow,

speaks to it, washes the neck

before he slaughters it. Slow down;



the cow might run.

He chews on rope

rather than grass.



Your Volvo might handle

the bang, but not the butcher’s

wrath. Turn left. Don’t brake.



The dung causes you to skid.

Skid left. The butcher’s wife

hangs the wash on the side-



walk around the corner,

white aprons (blood traces

almost bleached) and diapers.



Hassan loves to father

children: 7 boys, a stained

daughter and a cow. Always a cow.



Sometimes when it’s dark,

you might lose the curb

and hit a son.



Avoid the cow.







Starting a Trail



They dragged a man down the street

with gunshot celebrations,

with gold-plated Christs around their necks,

with boys learning to throw stones.



They dragged a man

who worshiped the other god,

who spoke a different dialect,

who wore a militant scarf.



He lived in a metal shack

without windows, without a wife,

without the Koran on the nightstand.

He couldn’t read.



They dragged a dead man.

He died miles before.

He died long before a rope was tied

around his ankle. He died



when he carried his first gun,

when he was fourteen,

when he realized god was a bullet,

when he pulled the trigger.

Shahe Mankerian