• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Poetry of the 1500s
  • Poetry of the1600s
  • Poetry of the 1700s
  • Poems for Kids
  • War Poems
  • Every Poem

Every Day Poems

A Poem A Day

  • Home
  • Book Publishers
  • Literary Magazines
  • Stories
  • Poems
  • Promote Books
  • Advertise
  • Submit

Khor Virap by Alex Vartan Gubbins

April 5, 2017 by Every Writer

Khor Virap

by Alex Vartan Gubbins

The night fog throws
a black cotton over the trees
as a voice behind the silence
dances off marble walls
from a hole, that tongue
from the earth’s torque
thirsty for threading moon
over the river’s hearty amble,
tenuous, stagnating ebullition
between blues wandering
the glows, where feral crust
lines itself with the eastern rush
in humble recession in the basin.
The moon tide of up & in & back
out to stretch the banks only to lay
a tarp of after-dusk over the valley.
If you stand & feel the power of
the current’s struggle against
your shins, removing calm instinct
to make you reconsider
the honor of shadow, then darkness
will tattoo itself into your heart.
of all you can see, & cannot.

…

[So be it, so be the pale
approach of reflection off the glass
in the dead pools. you’ll have enough
when the dying lamb’s pitch
makes you un-have what you thought of
when dreaming of christened wires
that quiet as you pass through.
you pry open metal in darkness,
testimony of humbling your crawl
so your palms understand
every stone across the river lowland.
what happened and what could still
as you silent-bottle what you
witnessed to get here, the crawling
across the fields, the touch
of cold lips & eyes, some
are open.]
###

Alex Vartan Gubbins was born in Chicago. He has a BA in African Languages and Literature from UW Wisconsin and an MFA from Northern Michigan University. He was the recipient of the 2014 Witter Bynner Translation Grant and a finalist in the North American Review’s 2015 James Hearst Poetry Prize. He’s recently been published in By & By Poetry, Bird’s Thumb, and Tishman Review. He currently lives in Yerevan, Armenia, where he works as a teacher. Avgubbins.net

Filed Under: Moon Poem, Nature Poems

Primary Sidebar

AD




Search

Latest

I’ve Set Out All of the Traps for Us by Kiara Nicole Letcher

I start to miss you right after you leave
and then at night I feel a deep ache
in that need spot.

The Shaman by Larry D. Thomas

Larry D. Thomas, a member of the Texas Institute of Letters, was the 2008 Texas Poet Laureate. He has published several award-winning and critically acclaimed collections of poetry

Now and Then

Phil Huffy writes early and often at his kitchen table, casting a wide net as to form and substance. His work has appeared in dozens of journals and anthologies, including Schuylkill Valley Review,

Copyright © 2023 · Magazine Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in