This poem first appeared in Volume 13.
for Victoria Yeghoian Dadekian
The human conscience is a ______ thing.
a. funny
b. frightening
c. frightened
d. flighty
This lake gives rise to _________.
a. River Dikris
b. the ink in my pen
c. the purpling of this river
d. my first heirloom
The deportees were led on to a plateau and ordered to sit down to rest (_______________).
a. they pretended to care
b. they pretended I had flesh
c. they pretended to look
Equipped with small fire-arms, knives, swords, clubs, they _____.
a. started
I lost _________.
a. consciousness
b. my baby sister, hurtled on the rocks
c. my mother who, in simple language, was butchered by the same man
I then met my aunt. She told me to pretend I was ____.
a. dead
b. alive
I was stabbed right under my heart. My aunt was lying next to me ____in ____. She was ____.
a. wallowing, blood, dead
b. praying, whispers, dead
c. holding me, her arms as a mother, dead
The human conscience is a ______ thing.
a. funny
b. frightening
c. frightened
d. flighty
__________.
a. Look