Marvyn Petrucci
In Armenia
I was just out of the army, pfc,
didn’t have
a condo to come home to, so I
went to Armenia,
where I met a Canadian woman
with a van.
Right away she handed over the keys
and credit cards.
One day we came out of a restaurant
and the doors were gone.
We drove into a village in this doorless van
and ran into a
funeral procession. A child had died.
The father carried
the coffin on his head, this little box,
three feet long.
After him came a string of adults,
single-file,
mostly women, then all these children
acting happy,
dressed in flowers, their best clothes,
laughing, in and out
of people’s legs, running around the father
like they were entwining him.
