Aram Saroyan: California Poets Part 10, Five Poems

Aram Saroyan

April 2nd, 2026

California Poets: Part X

Aram Saroyan

Five Poems

PARIS

1

F. Scott Fitzgerald needed a mentor

which is how I fit into the picture.

2

Picasso was silent

when I pointed out

that Cub

3

As a teenager

Gertrude Stein preferred

the opera to theater.

4

Dora Mar was a beautiful woman

who couldn’t get over Picasso.

5

The apartment was the size

of a postage stamp.

We took it immediately and

left after 36 days, breaking the lease,

to return to Kentucky.

ELDER MIND

Those junk shop windows

Paris 1959

a miscellany of pictures, knick-knacks

tossed-up ephemera…

Life has made the whole ensemble

personal—as if I looked then

at an elder mind

now my own.

JIM CARROLL

He walked around

with a little piece of the sun

never quite certain

what to do with it.

T. C.

A string of bad luck

hit you you

had a stroke

lost your job

when the college

collapsed Angelica

broke her hip, my God

we’re old people now

not young poets

leaving New York

to head West

the planet

re-jiggering as we

head to our grand

not-so-grand

exits. 

My first friend

when we

entered the fray

no one knows

what’s going to happen

to anybody

Kerouac told us

closing his own

book, the red

letters of his

concentration

A milder

more domesticated lot

we could still spot

the not-quite-all-there

leading to

calamitous

reprisals

in the papers.

Who cares?

With beautiful wives

we’d lead beautiful lives—

and so we did, for a while

taking our exemplars further

into domesticity,

our contribution

maybe.  If you don’t get

your due, the ledger

fills up anyway; we knew that too

from Allen

and Jack.

SINATRA & DINO

Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin

were the Hemingway and Fitzgerald

of a slightly later era, and                            

they paid a price for it, too.

But Frank, at least, was a reader                                     

and favored Fitzgerald,                                     

though you would have to peg Dino                                     

as the Gatsby of the two.                                     

Author Bio:

Aram Saroyan’s most recent book is Before I Forget: A Memoir (Three Rooms Press). Three titles edited by Matthew Hofer are forthcoming from the University of New Mexico Press: Out of the Blue: Selected Correspondence (1963-1972); The Lines Reprint; and The Letter Book.  His widely translated Complete Minimal Poems received the 2008 William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America.