When the black van pulled over, my hand was in yours.They thought I was your lover: my hand was in yours.When she yanked up your headscarf, when you fell to the ground,when the lights loomed above her, my hand was in yours.When they marched us here, when we crossed or drowned inyour namesake river, my hand was in yours.“A grown man”—“My son”—“Binamoos, haram!”Lest the faithful discover my hand was in yours.When Old Julfa was burning and drunk on fear—we’re still hungover—my hand was in yours.You were the wife of Lot. I was the salt of your body.Though I’m not a believer, my hand was in yours.“Who speaks of the Armenians?” Let our gravestones crumbleso they can uncover my hand was in yours.
Vice Squad
Armen Davoudian
Feature Date
- January 8, 2025
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“Vice Squad” from The Palace of Forty Pillars: by Armen Davoudian.
Published by Tin House on March 19, 2024.
Copyright © 2024 by Armen Davoudian.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Wry, tender, and formally innovative, Armen Davoudian’s debut poetry collection, The Palace of Forty Pillars, tells the story of a self estranged from the world around him as a gay adolescent, an Armenian in Iran, and an immigrant in America. It is a story darkened by the long shadow of global tragedies—the Armenian genocide, war in the Middle East, the specter of homophobia. With masterful attention to rhyme and meter, these poems also carefully witness the most intimate encounters: the awkward distance between mother and son getting ready in the morning, the delicate balance of power between lovers, a tense exchange with the morality police in Iran.
In Isfahan, Iran, the eponymous palace has only twenty pillars—but, reflected in its courtyard pool, they become forty. This is the gamble of Davoudian’s magical, ruminative poems: to recreate, in art’s reflection, a home for the speaker, who is unable to return to it in life.
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