Armenian Hair, and: Being Armenian, and: Armenian Restaurant in Arkansas
- Armenian Hair, and: Being Armenian, and: Armenian Restaurant in Arkansas
Armenian Hair
I feel pity, not for the black tree trunksthat stand straight from my eyebrows,but the baby wispy hairs that growwithout direction or guidance.
They need outside help, so I wax,pluck, and date men who love ethnic girlsbut ask me to get a Brazilian. One offersto pay for it, and it lasts an hour and a half.
The aesthetician sweats and curses,inquires if I am Lebanese or Russian.Oh Armenian? she exclaims, youshould have told me.
When she finishes, my skin burns red,speckled with blood, a chickenfreshly plucked. No sex for 24 hours,she warns, actually, 48 for you.
She knows that Armenian hair takes over,spreading over fences into neighbors' yards,the city's rose gardens, and beyond,claiming the only land they have left. [End Page 24]
Being Armenian
Mostly, you feel popularin your suffering, everyonewants to claim you—Palestinians, Greeks,Jews, but at other points,the distaste emanatesfrom a place not on any map.During a filling,my back molar sharp with heat,I asked for more Novocain.The dentist sighed, shook his head,muttered, oh, you Armenians.Upon meeting my ex's mother,she said, I know all about you Armenians –I lived in L.A. and watch the Kardashians. [End Page 25]
Armenian Restaurant in Arkansas
They served wine from California, never France,advertised the menu as Mediterranean,not Middle Eastern. They understood their clientele.
One waiter smoked meth in the bathroom,another read Proust while I refilledhis tables' water glasses.
Return me to my black apronwith its beige smears of baba ghanoushand salty stench of feta in its brine.
I know the real reason I worked there,not what I convinced myself at the time –to earn cash to travel to Prague and Bratislava.
No, I was a purple wound, a cracked hull.Escaping into the bowels of the country,I hadn't spoken to my family in four years.
A square of charred eggplant or the mintof tabouli slipped onto my tonguewas the only way I could taste home. [End Page 26]
Jen Siraganian is a Bay Area poet and author of the chapbook Fracture. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she has received scholarships from the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley and Napa Valley Writers' Conference. Her poems have appeared in numerous publications including Mid-American Review, Smartish Pace, and Barrow Street.
