Oh I want to ask a question before I read this.
Does the phrase-- like if somebody
says that somebody saved their bacon, if that means anything
to anyone here, raise your hand so I can see.
OK.
[LAUGHTER]
I want to see if it's common usage like, no, I don't know,
they find your car keys or they tell
you what's going to be on the test or something.
They rescue you in some way.
A colloquial way of saying somebody rescued me.
OK, well.
I use it in a second round here.
Now you will all understand it.
"Mrs. Krikorian."
"Today I remembered Mrs. Krikorian,
how she saved my bacon.
I arrived in sixth grade, a known criminal,
and the new teacher asked me to stay after school
the first day.
She said, "I've heard about you."
She was a tall woman, deep breasted
with a mass of dark hair around her face,
and a large calm nose.
She said, "You see this."
It was a little card, small, white card
that saved me from evil.
This is a special library pass.
As soon as you finish your hour's work--
that hour's work that took 10 minutes.
And then the devil glanced into the room and found me empty.
A house standing open for rent, for sale, fire sale, fire--
you can go to the library.
Hour after hour I'd zip through the work
and slip out of my seat like an angel out of God's side,
and sail down to the library.
Down through the empty powerful halls, flash my pass
and sashay over to the dictionary to look up spank.
Dipping two fingers into the vat of library paste,
to suck that minty mucilage while I
came to the page with the cocker spaniel's silks
curling up like the fine steam of the body.
After spank and breast, I'd move on to Abe Lincoln and Helen
Keller, lost in goodness till the bell, all thanks to Mrs.
Krikorian, amiable giantess with the dark eyes.
Next, she asked me to write a Christmas play and direct it.
And when it was imperfect and I hid in the closet,
came up to me in the coaty, rubbery dark and held out
a tiny cane of scarlet and milk white peppermint,
as you lay a candy on the tongue of a child and the worm
will come up out of the bowel to get it.
And so I was emptied of Lucifer and filled
with school glue and eros and Amelia Earhart,
saved by Mrs. Krikorian.
Today for the first time, I saw Mrs. Krikorian was Armenian.
And then who saved Mrs. Krikorian?
When the Turks came across the fields
like a thresher flailing its blades,
who slid her into the slick belly of a quilt?
Who locked her in a chest?
Who mailed her to America?
And that one, who saved her when the Turks came
with their thumpers, their rat hunt clubs?
And that one, who saved her to save
the one who saved Mrs. Krikorian, who was standing
there on the soil of sixth grade like a wide-hipped angel
or of smoking hair standing up lightly all around her head?
I end up owing my soul to so many, to the Armenian nation.
One more soul someone jammed behind a stove, drove deep
into the crack of a wall, shoved under a bed.
I remember lying there under the bed in the dusk.
The dustballs at my head and feet round and silver,
shining slightly with the eerie sweetness of what is neither
good nor evil. " I hope that poem finds her, some time,
some way.
When I have finished in sixth grade I would--
it's a message in a bottle to her anyway.
It's a thing which-- a thanks.
OK.
Yeah.