1st Place WINNER OF THE POETRY CONTEST: Hovagim James Najarian - The Aunties

 The Aunties
arrived in multitudes, battalions, from
New York, Philadelphia, Syracuse,
Constantinople, Beirut, Diarbekir:
every family event a production of Pinafore,
 
embellished with talented women, who each held
a handbag unending as experience,
stuffed with sesame candies and crochet.
The other hand clenched an emergency cake.
 
I was the ring-bearer for my cousin Taline’s wedding
My rented tux arrived a size too small.
No matter. I bounced around the basement in my skivvies
while seventeen Aunties let the trousers out.
 
Auntie A. smuggled the family out of Smyrna
before a Pasha burnt it to the stones.
She did fine needlework. In her own shop,
she garlanded linens with phantasmal flowers.
 
Auntie B. taught Spanish (she fled Aleppo for Havana).
Auntie C. made filo with a yard-long rolling pin.
Auntie D. was on her fourth passport and sixth language.
They all secreted jewelry ‘just in case.’
 
Where are the Aunties now? I imagine them
vanquishing the households of North America,
a Golden Horde un-pillaging the suburbs.
They are hemming dresses and darning socks,
 
scouring the bottoms of saucepans with Bon Ami.
They make meat-and-eggplant and real soup,
to serve with a tablecloth on the good china--
then tell us to sit up, as straight as their seams.