“No one wants to read a poem
about your dead grandmother,”
the poet laureate preached.
Well, my dead grandmothers
wouldn’t want poetry written
about them either—dead or alive.
Their villages shattered,
brothers and sisters scattered.
And anyway, no granddaughter
ever wants to pen slaughter.
When I was in sixth grade
we moved to the farm
to care for one of my grandmas.
She seemed subdued; her body soft.
When she smiled her eyes disappeared
behind thick glasses. But if you could
coax Grandma to laugh, her shoulders
shook; her upper arms jiggled.
It was enchanting. Like somehow a
curse had been broken. Why risk a dead
grandmother poem? Simply because
when magic surpasses massacre,
poetry insists. So when poems
materialized, popped out of thin air,
this granddaughter began to write.
Susan Haroutunian Cunningham is an Armenian-American poet and host of the podcast “Living Poetry.” A descendant of Armenian Genocide survivors, she writes poetry that bridges grief, resilience, and the restorative power of storytelling. Susan lives in Fresno, CA with her husband, John.
