Lory Bedikian: California Poets Part 8, Two Poems
January 8th, 2025
California Poets: Part VIII
Lory Bedikian
Two Poems
Copy That
This is an accurate statement: I have never liked
or loved the word “artificial.” Mother adjusts
the small-print in the kitchen’s dim light to read
a color number this and another color number
that. Father says that these foods will some day
make us all sick. But mother hands him the bag
regardless. Faces artificial in structure are starting
to scare me. Boo! Nothing. Quick, run! Nothing.
The forehead stays the same. The lips can barely
speak. I don’t judge, so I don’t ask the person
to say balderdash or disestablishmentarianism.
Yes, I review the years. I review the mentioning
of anything made by humans that would be better
made by nature or naturally. And what is natural
nowadays anyway? Naturally, I won’t answer easily.
My father was the epitome of intelligence, but it
was his own making, his own configuration, potpourri
making its medley of philosophy, pistachio, big liars,
lavash bread cut into perfect squares because there
was nothing else to do on Saturday or Sunday
mornings but control and distribute portions of bread
to himself and maybe his wife, maybe this took
the place of once cutting slices of wonder bread into
dice-cube-sizes for the communion tray, the fake
wine (grape juice). A man who was once a minister
always remains a man of God, even when he has
given up on the nature of man, on the intelligence
level of the world, its leaders and pathetic followers,
is there any natural way to rid ourselves of this anger?
Maybe it needs to naturally dissolve. Maybe we need
to take artificial means and rub it a bit in the dirt
to remember the holy earth, not mother or father
nature, but the first breath of all kept momentarily
holy before we ruin it like we’ve ruined everything else.
Blue Evil Eye Blues
“jealousy. It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock/The meat it feeds on.” — Shakespeare
Once I dated the green-eyed monster
and we got along quite well. That is
until I began plucking their chest hairs
to stuff a pillow I named Evan the Great.
They made it obvious that not only
were they feeding on me, but mocking
themselves and me simultaneously,
while bad-mouthing behind the back,
borrowing my empty wallet and name,
lovingly making fun of the way I cry
into the ripped sleeves of an old sweater
that was once a rug, then a blanket
I once used to cover them after we made
up, after the hell of fighting had settled
into chamomile, crackers and peanuts.
I love the color green. Trees, broccoli,
the leaf I kept in my pocket the whole
way home. Raw, shelled almonds.
When we broke up, my husband
said, admit it, I’m way better than…
told me about philosophers, held
my hand, saying turn the page, turn
bitterness into alabaster and rum shots.
I keep pointing to them from about
two hundred feet. My husband grabs
my shoulders and says look what you
just missed. Now we have to wait
in line again. We were about to get on.
Author Bio:
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 in Poetry. Several of Bedikian’s poems received the First Prize Award in the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry as part of the 2022 Nimrod Literary Awards. She teaches poetry workshops in Los Angeles and elsewhere.
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