Glendale High School senior, and Explosion staff writer, Hasmik Tumasyan was selected as one of three winners of the 2024 Young Armenian Poets Awards in honor of Tamar Asadourian. This contest is open to writers worldwide, and it “recognizes and provides a platform for exceptional Armenian writers between the ages of 14 and 18.” Hasmik’s poem, “home is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on lavash bread”, was selected out of thousands of submissions.

Here is Hasmik’s award-winning poem:

home is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on lavash bread

sweet like chocolate chip cookies and pomegranate seeds and hugs from jetlagged relatives who just got off fourteen hour flights. salty, crunchy (because my mom is convinced it’s healthier), seeping from either side of the makeshift roll.

my tatik stacks lavash on top of itself

and cuts it into neat slices every time.

i rip off scraps whenever i need them

with all the rugged individualism of the American Dream. a kind of free-spiritedness that might’ve been appreciated at Boston Harbor,

not so much at the table.

 

my pb&j is made on lavash speckled with tonir spots

because white bread feels wrong.

my jelly is actually apricot preserve

because real jelly doesn’t feel real.

sweet like the highlands. sweet like jan.

sweet like gas station donuts. sweet like the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock.

the salt stings lovingly –

an innocent laugh at my unrolled “r’s,”

that distinctly Armenian tyranny.

that distinctly American apathy.