Elise Kazanjian: California Poets Part 10, Three Poems

Elise Kazanjian

April 2nd, 2026

California Poets: Part X

Elise Kazanjian

Three Poems

Fill The Spaces With Gold

I find beauty in brokenness,

that space, that crack in the pottery

scented with yearning

has new meaning when

you repair it with gold

like the Japanese practice of Kintsugi.

Kintsugi doesn’t hide the rupture

but shows the grace and strength

of a shattered object,

the gold paste repair

changing a former life

now regarded with a fresh eye.

A metaphor for death’s challenges

reveling in the treasure of what we have,

and had in hand, giving solace for healing

to accept that the chipped and mended

is not better, or worse, just different

in a whole new beautiful way.

The repair tells of a story

and a life we share

like a flesh wound scarring us and

becoming whole again, listening

at the junction of yearning, and ending

that no longer has the same beginning.

For Lucy

You click clack into our Fillmore Street pawnshop

feisty-five-foot-trim-body-on-stiletto-heels,

staccato-razor-sharp-tongue,

customers, staff blanch, raucous voice

your glance fires from lashed-glowing eyes

Lucy, you can cower a bull moose in rut.

You icy tirades belie an angel face. Alabaster skin,

deceptively frail. You ran a famous Honolulu bordello

during World War II. Now you wear designer suits.

Still pack heat in your Dior bag. 

You bring intoxicating glimpses

of past sensational Hawaiian days.

You think of us as family, give gifts.

An ornately carved piano,

finely embroidered linens,

lacy Valentine cards, velvet hearts,

florid sentiments by devoted admirers. 

You cross out their names sign your own.

We visit your spacious

Victorian home on Lyons Street.

You offer coffee, pastries,

exotic brews

poured from sterling sets,

the finest English bone china.

You give me sage advice

in your raspy voice.

“Honey, get out there

and enjoy your man.

Life is short

and good men just ain’t around.”

Lucy, I miss being a character in your pulp novel.

Letter To An Unknown Grandmother

Born more than a century ago,

you smile at me from the sepia photo.

Elegant, slender, you zero into my very being.

Your delicate face framed by well coifed hair

your long stylish dress adorned with French lace,

I can almost reach out and touch you.

Softly I  dream your name

gifted to me. You are etched in my cells.

I hear your voice

whispering through  halls of memory

a gentle benediction that

blesses me and my Armenian soul.

Talk to me,

I beg.

Tell me about those nine short years

you had with my mother

before death claimed you at thirty three.

Tell me all the things a grandmother knows.

Take me on a journey,

I beg. Let me enter the rooms of your past.

Your shadowy embrace nurtures my 91 years.

Tell me what books you read, how you felt,

what you wrote, tell me about Istanbul,

the city you always called Constantinople.

Reminisce with me,

I beg.

I want to try on your life like a new dress.

I want to savor you like a splendid dish,

and sate myself knowing I will

never be lonely again.

Author Bio:

Elise Kazanjian is a San Francisco poet/writer whose work has appeared in the 2025 SF Bards

Anthology; the 2024 Season Lightly With Salt; 2021 Fog & Light: San Francisco Seen Through the Eyes of the Poets Who Live Here; on Vox Populi; New Verse News; the SF Chronicle, and others. She has worked at KQED-TV; as Foreign Editor, CCTV, Beijing, China; and as a San Francisco pawnbroker. She collects vintage ink fountain pens and swears they inspire her poems.