Poem | Tip-Toes by YAPA 2024 Honorable Mention Ani Kradjian

Tip-Toes

Grandmother’s hands map to the sweetest loquat,
Protect my face from selfish stray hairs
Slicked back by the dampness of her palms
Gently saturated with the essence of strawberries she sliced
Knife facing her,
Selfless as the Motherland
 
Her rooftop in Shtura remembers her grace,
Grape stems remain scattered where she last read
Under her willow tree
On its tip-toes to shade her
 
Her rooftop in California is watched over by her olive tree
Who shelters my reading steps
And watermelon rinds,
We belong where the trees stand on their toes for us

Ani Kradjian is an 18-year-old student at the University of Washington in Seattle pursuing a double major in Global Studies and Communications, and has studied creative writing at an Oxford University summer program. Born and raised in San Diego, California, Kradjian has been involved in the Armenian community all her life, and is part of the Armenian Students Association at UW. She grew up writing poems and stories, studying vocal performance, piano, guitar, and theater.

YAPA Director Alan Semerdjian on Kradjian’s “Tip-Toes”:

“Ani Kradjian’s wonderfully-crafted “Tip-Toes” explores the idea of home through a short meditation on her grandmother’s person and emigration from a small Armenian community in, presumably, Lebanon to the United States and, more specifically, her rooftop in California where she is “watched over by her olive tree.” Indeed, trees are guardians of some sort in this poem. The willow tree in Shtura stands “on its tip-toes to shade her” (the grandmother) and the aforementioned olive tree “shelters” the speaker’s “reading steps / And watermelon rinds,” an inventive pairing both imagistically and sonically. There is a sense in the poem that there are forces in the world from which one may need protection, but the specifics are omitted. Home, then, is the place that offers such protection and, though it may be a kind of moving target, especially for those of us who have made the greater journeys, it is manifested in our relationship with the natural world, which is aware of our pain. Additionally, there is an innocence in the poem, suggested by the title and the way the personification is built, concluding with the almost whimsical last line: “We belong where the trees stand on their toes for us.” But this innocence is juxtaposed with a sharper edge tonally, and with depth and weight. The image of the grandmother early on is beautifully rendered and is a symbolic ode to Mother Armenia, “her grace” alongside her courage and strength (“Knife facing her”) create a parallelism that is mirrored in the last two stanzas of the poem, quatrains that riff off each other syntactically at times and even symmetrically and syllabically. “Tip-Toes” is a poignant work of art.”

Alan Semerdjian is a writer, musician, and educator. His works include In the Architecture of Bone (GenPop Books, 2009), The Serpent and The Crane (a collaboration of poetry and music with Aram Bajakian), and several collections of critically-acclaimed albums covering a wide range of genres from singer-songwriter to free jazz and alternative rock. He has taught English and Creative Writing in public education for 25 years and is currently the poet laureate of New York’s Nassau County.