Christine Alexanians

One of the highlights of this year's UCLA Festival of Books at the Authors' Coop booth was the poetry hour on Sunday April 26, 2009. I read two new poems Horses and Fractured Solitude to an audience of more than 50 people. Four other fellow poets, PArdis Bagherzadeh, Sona Ovasapyan, award winning DOn Kingfisher Campbell and award winning Carolyn Howard-Johnson also recited from their latest collections.

Because of the limited space in our booth we had the chance to read on the LA Times stage.

Fractured Solitude

Silence.

Not pure silence.

The kind of silence where nature communicates

 with my most inner layers,

where a breeze is welcomed like a famous musician.

Silence that only allows the birds’ call

and the buzzing of insects, that amplifies

the song of water, the applause of leaves.

It breaks for a duck warning his friends of danger,

or a fly searching for treasure.

The silence that witnesses the mushrooms grow,

the dragonfly kiss the pond and the flowers bloom.

I inhale this silence, lock it in my heart,