Talin Tahajian: Baptism
We begin our lives by dying
& waking up again, eyes sensitive
to the kind of light that exists in places
that aren’t heaven. This isn’t heaven.
I like the way other countries look
after midnight. Ghosts swimming
through empty chapels. That silence
is something sacred. Too dark to see
your reflection as a god in a display
window. Glass is one of the only
honest things. I love not knowing
what it means to be innocent. I rinse
my mouth with every kind of holy
water. By that, I mean I have kissed
the mouths of so many beautiful boys.
I remember thinking or saying This
is how I want to finish my life. To unlearn
the Bible, first I would have to read it
until I understand what it means
to be a religion, to embrace that sort
of death with bright things.
Mussel
Too many times, I have watched
flesh turn. Familiar things:
a daughter cracking mussels
against the pier, mollusks alive
and smacking. Yellow meat
crushed against bedrock.
A shade of white so slight, it is what
I imagine it's like to be open, inviting.
Someday, there will be no
such thing as boneless. At night
even salt glows with the light
of a body underwater.
TALIN TAHAJIAN grew up
near Boston. Her poetry has recently appeared in Salt Hill Journal, Indiana
Review, Kenyon Review Online, Best New Poets 2014, Columbia
Poetry Review, DIAGRAM, and Washington Square Review. She's
the author of half a split chapbook, Start with Dead Things (Midnight City
Books, 2015), and serves as a poetry editor for The Adroit Journal. She is
currently an undergraduate student at the University of Cambridge, where she studies
English literature and attempts to assimilate..
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