Smoke & Branch
Ronald Dzerigian
I say,
I do not, in youth, hurt
for loss or hunger. I do not—
until I invent such a thing.
At eighteen, I know nothing.
A year later, when speaking
to my grandparents,
I learn about the genocide.
I look out at the young pine
& see the smoke,
behind St. Gregory,
illuminated. I am,
healing—yet the gauze
leaks. The smoke, today,
does not come from the church.
She says,
my grandfather came from the old country;
his name was Prudian. Prudian means
pottery maker. He came to America
to learn how to glaze pottery. When
he came, the genocide happened, &
he never went back. My mother was born
in New Jersey in 1892 where she
finished school at grade eight. She
learned a lot by reading. Soon there-
after they moved to Fresno. My father
& his brother, however, came to America
as orphans. My father was about 17
years old. When they landed at Ellis
Island & the time came to give their name,
my uncle said Garabed Der Hartunian.
The man at the desk suggested, because
the name seemed too complicated,
that he add “ian” to Garabed. My father
agreed to take the same name, being
that there were only two of them. This
is how we got the name Garabedian,
but it is also why our family is not
related to the Fresno Garabedians. My
father didn’t have any close relatives
because everyone was killed.
He never talked much about his life,
so we heard from other people
about the genocide.
I say,
work earns
what art cannot. A poem, a book,
a frame on a church
nave wall.
What’s in it does not matter;
what makes it,
does. I take a chainsaw
to a dying tree; I write words
on a computer screen.
A group of people build a branch
to the orthodox. Dog buries
bone. These things
are magic, but one magic
can take bayonet to another,
or, more honestly,
bury it.
He says,
my grandfather settled
in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1896
to see if he could make a living. He
opened a little barber shop & lived
in Lawrence until he died. My father,
& his brother, Louie, were born in Romania.
They were the only ones who came over
with my grandfather. My father was six
& Louie was maybe four when they
came. They stayed in Lawrence until
the first World War. Then my father,
when he was about twenty, went
across the border to join the British
Legion in Canada when the war broke
out. He was sent to the Middle East
as an interpreter because he knew
several languages. He then became
an interpreter at an Armenian concentration
camp. He would translate for the British
there & that is where he met my mother.
I say,
the branch bends until it breaks;
two falls worth of leaves have gathered
in its arms. Wasp nest, rat fur,
bird bones & eggshells tumble out
amongst the dry clutter. I take
a rake to clear the stubbled grass.
I hear my professor,
during my first year of college, say that Hitler
learned from the Turks. I think
of my World History courses that remained mute
to this. I hear our president
refer to Haiti & African nations as shithole countries.
I hear my breathing, my heartbeat,
in the great silence of this day. I rake
a quiet spectacle of waste
to avoid the ventricular hum.
She says,
when he moved to Reedley, he met my
mother. It was an arranged marriage;
my mother was so shy. She was so shy
that she stood behind the door to receive
the engagement ring. When I was born,
I was the fifth child. There were six
of us; two brothers & four sisters.
My father found us a ranch in Sanger,
so we moved. The ranch had a big
two-story house in nice red with
white trim. But, when I was four & a half,
my father heard an explosion
in the boiler room. He had been keeping
his shotgun in there & it went off.
He knew something was wrong.
I say,
the roof has a hole
burnt through & the boy who lived
there has been expelled
for bringing a knife to class.
Their street carries ash markers
past which I am
forever walking; in ash
drifts I walk, as I should, one foot
in front of another.
This street is never mine.
I believe it belongs to blacked-out
parents of embittered children.
I place my hand into a hive of bees
that pours its workers out
from the body of an old
cork oak. The street, the bees—
they belong to the smoke
that eats at the legs of day-sleepers.
He says,
my mother was a refugee from Turkey.
They married there. They then returned,
together, to the United States & settled
in Fresno where my brother, sister & I
were born. I was born in 1921. One other
brother, Paul, died as an infant. I wore
corduroys until they could stand
on their own—as was the style back then.
I graduated high school in 1938 & then
went to work. I often worked during
the summer with my dad who had a wooden
box business &, in the winter when
there was no work making boxes, I
worked in a raisin packing house
to make money & bring it home—
this was during the depression. My
father divorced my mother, which was
very controversial back then. The war
came along, & I went into the air force.
I ask,
the chainsaw machinist
to dispose of the body when there is no
affordable way to fix the scored
piston. I ask this & he suggests
a proper burial. He intones
through the vapors of last night’s beer—
he drawls out the damage, the severe
scouring beneath the exhaust skirt,
he anchors a drift of assumptions
& estimates that the scarring may have occurred
due to fuel miseducation
& low oil—I accept &, withal, accept
my new education. I do not
want to accept
my miseducation any longer. I repeat
this in whisper, in secret prayer
to my grandfather’s ghost,
into my grandmother’s hearing-aid
as I change the battery: I accept
my miseducation no more. The dog
cannot find the bodies
beneath the earth without a clue, a scent,
a trail. He will dig
for nothing, until nothing is found.
She says,
the house burned down that night.
My father had a cool head; he didn’t
panic at all. He got us all out & we
watched the house burn from the end
of our long driveway lined with olive
& orange trees interspersed down
its length. That is why we all have a
fear of fire. We had to move to town
from the country until something
was built. While I was in grammar school,
my father built us a little temporary
house; a little too small for eight of us.
We lived in that little house for years.
The plan was that—when we could afford
it—we’d build a bigger house, but we
had bad luck. Every year it was some-
thing. If it wasn’t vine louse, it was
the frost; if it wasn’t the frost, it was
the rain. Life was hard, but we ate good
because my father would butcher
the animals & store the meat in the ice
storage in Sanger. We would grow
our vegetables in the summer &
my mother would do a lot of canning.
I say,
sap bleeds into powdered
dirt, becomes paint on my eyelids;
it can carry the greatest taste
of future complications. An ad
on YouTube says,
control your dreams
& change your life;
I say, no.
He says,
I was going to go into pilot training,
but I didn’t pass the test so was put back
into ground forces. I eventually went
overseas & was put on a bomber
as a radio operator. We flew forty missions
over the Pacific until the war came
to an end & we came home to await
discharge. After the war ended, they
released us to go back to civilian life.
That’s when I met Lucille. We courted
for a very short time, got married, &
settled in Fresno. After two years
of marriage, we had one son, Steve.
Four years later we had a daughter, Adele.
I say,
I can feel a war coming on;
I can feel the coming blackout,
a toppling of antennas, a pilot
calling to the radio operator in stifled
dream-struggle. If
the war was mine, I would join. If
I was called to arms, I’d offer
my arm for breaking. I say this
in the voice of empty helmets;
I say this in the voice of dying children
& those who have seen
their parents taken. I say this through the throat
that hides jewelry
from thieves. I feel a war beneath
my feet as I stand at the foot
of any hill that does not belong to me.
She says,
I went to high school in Sanger & college
in Reedley for a couple of years. Then
I went to work at Anglo Bank in Bakersfield;
then I went to San Jose to work in
a shoe store. When I came home, the boys
were away in the war, & I began to work
at Bank of America in downtown Fresno.
That is how I met your grandfather.
We were supposed to close at noon one
day &, of course since we were closing,
no one wanted a customer. But here he
comes, with his cute personality. It was
love at first sight on my part, because
later that day, when I went home, I
immediately told my roommate that I
wanted to date him. Not too much later
my girlfriend & I went to a dance
at the Memorial Auditorium & he was
there. I stared at him; you know what
they say, the longer you stare at someone
they will eventually return your stare.
He asked me to dance & he drove my
girlfriend & I home afterwards. We
dated awhile. He was a good ballroom
dancer & an excellent violinist. He would
serenade me over the phone. About five
months later he asked me to marry him,
we eloped to Reno, & spent our honeymoon
explaining to our families
what we had done.
Ronald Dzerigian is the author of Rough Fire (2018). His poems have appeared in the Australian Book Review, Comstock Review, Into the Void, Prairie Schooner, RHINO, Salamander, Vinyl, and others. He resides in California's San Joaquin Valley with his wife and two daughters.