To Whom It May Concern: Mama craves
people like the Pope craves the window
with a microphone. She knows two tame
jokes: one about a priest stuck in an elevator
with a nun and another about a snake drowning
in a jacuzzi with a Turk. If offered Armenian coffee,
she’ll repay your kindness with poetry. Help her
to stand on a chair, light her cigarette, and wait.
Neither dementia nor her loose dentures
will get in the way of her recitations:
A man climbs Mt. Ararat in search of the ark
but discovers a lonely sparrow buried in the snow.
