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Armen Davoudian — Coming Out of the Shower
00:16:23
In Armen Davoudian’s casually intimate poem “Coming Out of the Shower”, mother and son perform their morning routines in the small, shared space of their household’s only bathroom. She chats and puts on her makeup, while he showers and uses her shampoo and robe — oh what rhythm, affection, and ease are to be seen in this dance they both know so well. We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns, or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes.
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- [00:04]
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My name is Padre Gotuma, and when I was growing up, most of the poems that I learned in school were rhyming poems. And rhyming is one of those things that comes in and out of fashion in contemporary poetry. Different places will favor it, or other places will say that, you know, rhyming is a thing of the past. Lots of the old English language and other language poems rhymed too, but in other languages. Old poems didn't rhyme in what we might think of as a perfect rhyme, but they might have used very, very mathematical measurements of syllable count or alliteration or assonance as well. And of course then lots of poems use internal rhyme and all of those techniques, all of those metricalities, whether rhyme or alliteration or assonance or syllable count, all of them bring us back to the primary music of all of our lives, which is the Heartbeat. Coming out of the Shower by Armen Davodian I shut my eyes under the scalding stream, scrubbing off last night's dream when, when suddenly I hear your voice again, as though it caught in the clogged drain and was sent bubbling back up from the other world where you're not my mother this time it's really you. I'm really here. I blink. We do not disappear. Dad left, you say, to shower at the shop, so I don't need to stop just yet. And yet I do, unable to resume old customs, unlike you. In a one bath four person household we learn what we mustn't see, growing in time, so coolly intimate with one another's silhouette behind the opaque frosted shower screen that once more stands between us two. While at the mirror you apply foundation and concealer, I wash out my hair with rose water shampoo, which means I I'll smell like you all day. Mamma, I shout, I'm coming out. And as you look away I knot around me tight your lavender robe de chambre, cinching my waist and clamber out of the tub, taking care not to step outside the cotton mat and drip on the cracked floor you've polished with such zeal we were mirrored in each tile, yet you'd forgive the spillage or forget what else will you love me despite? This poem by Armen Devoudian is such an intimate poem, a family set up in what he calls a one bath four person household, and there's bodies and people in such deep proximity, and with the proximity comes privacy that holds them together and makes them distinct, and that, I think is a characteristic of so much of his poetry throughout his work. So this speaker in the poem is in the shower under the scalding stream. And his mother has entered the bathroom. And later we hear about that. There's the silhouette behind the opaque frosted shower screen. And the way that you need to learn what we mustn't see when you're in such proximity. She gives him the news of the day that the dad had left a shower at the shop so that he could take a longer shower, I'm guessing. But he stops anyway. And then she's applying foundation and concealer and he is going to smell of rose water, shampoo, a shampoo that's hers. And he wraps himself in her dressing gown. That's the action of the poem, this exchange. Old habits, questions as to who's going to shower where. Questions about the body, about the gaze, about turning the gaze away. There's such predictions, privacy and such everyday and such intimacy in it. And all of this takes place in the bathroom, you know, a place of nakedness, a place of seeing your own skin, seeing your own face in the mirror. And also in the tiles, a place where there's sometimes spilled water, places of cotton mats. Just the tiny furniture of this small space is sketched for us so powerfully in this elegant poem. Every time I read this poem, I find myself slowing down because it uses such vernacular language and it describes something so every day with particular attention to what's seen and what's not seen. And it's also a poem of such formal composition. It's an 8, 4 line stanzas. I think you can hear in the recitation of it, the rhyming system. The first two lines rhyme and then line three and four rhyme also AA B B so four lines, but then also four people were told, each related to each other. We don't hear who the fourth person is. A sibling, perhaps. We don't know. In the structure of this poem, sometimes the rhymes are perfect. You hear it right from the beginning, stream and dream. And then other times they're a little bit more like a slant. Rhyme out and not. Or chambre and clamber. Another thing that's present in the formal composition of this brilliant poem is that every second line. So the first and the third line of each stanza is exactly 10 syllables long. I shut my eyes under the scalding stream in a one bath, four person household, we. And then also behind the opaque frosted shower screen. And then toward the end, yet you'd forgive the spillage or forget all of these. The first and the third line of every stanza is 10 syllables. And then the second and the fourth, it seems. I'm sure I've made mistakes, but mostly seven or eight syllables. I think there might be one that's six. And then going back to the rhyme, the final stan. Opaque, just like the shower curtain. Zeal and tile and forget. And despite such interesting way to establish brilliant formal mechanisms of rhyme. And then just like Emily Dickinson toward the end, to demonstrate the capacity to enter in through a side door, to do something a little bit unexpected, still keeping to the expectation of convention, but also pushing it a little bit. A little bit of jazz in the ear that's listening, listening out for what's going to come next. Armand Davudian is Armenian, raised in Iran, in Isfahan, and then he moved to the United States. And so these languages, Armenian, Persian and English, are the languages that he interacts with, you know, in life and in poetry and communication. He's gay as well. So the title Coming out of the Shower could perhaps have some other meaning, multiple meanings, perhaps. This poem is somewhat like a mirror, an opaque mirror to a very famous poem by the American poet James Merrill, who also, in the first part of a particular poem, describes showers and privacy and sexuality and awkwardness and silence. This poem populates it. However, this poem of our Mendevodians populates it in a place of proximity without threat, deep privacy. Though there's so much presence and absence in the poem, I love it. And the way that what is near can also be at a distance. You know, there's the last night's dream that he's scrubbing off under the scalding stream of the shower. Right at the start, he's awake, but he's also still somewhat asleep. He's in two places at once. I wonder what it could be. The world where you're not my mother is mentioned in the second stanza. And then that last line of the second stanza says, I blink. We do not disappear. It makes me wonder, what is it that has caused a family to be living here? Have they left somewhere? Have they fled? Is this a personal story? Or is this a story of Armenians who have left Armenia, gone to Iran first, and then perhaps moved to the States? There seems to be some way within which the past is present. And with the necessity to be able to remind oneself that the past is the past. One of the characters seems to be able to do that and still have the habits of the past, but the other doesn't. Then there's what's plainly visible in front of you as well, what you learn not to see. The way that people who, in a family unit who are sharing a bathroom learn to avert their eyes. So what's present but what's not, what is seen but what is chosen to be unseen. And. And the intimacy of the face. The mother's looking into the mirror. And I keep on weighing those powerful words, foundation and concealer. It seems to me like those two things are not simply describing what it is that the mother's doing and applying ablutions to her face, but also thinking about what are the foundations of shared family life, of a mother, son relationship, of familial friendships, of familial proximities, but also then concealing the ways in which they're new to each other. Especially in this one bathroom, in a four person household is about concealing something. Also a chosen, private, deeply respectful concealing. He smells of her rose water shampoo and the lavender robe knotted around him. I always find myself sniffing for the scent of rose water and lavender, even though these things are just implied in the poem. But I love the evocative nature of it. And this. The intimacy and the privacy in this poem is powerful and is found in so many of his poems. And here what we see too is revelation. Revelation of a body, revelation of cleansing. Revelation too, of a dream that you're scraping away. And reticence, also chosen reticence. The world of the shared bathroom is reduced to the desire not to drip on the floor. Because perhaps he knows that his mother might be the one to say, you're gonna have to clean that up or figure it out. But it doesn't go in that direction, which is so nice. It feels like the small space of the bathroom is reduced to the small space of standing with deep consideration just on the bath mat. There's such nearness, you know, wherever she is, she's looking in the mirror. And they're mirrored in the tile anyway, both of them. And in the small space between them. There's a vast, beautiful richness of love between them. Forgiveness, forgetting and love. All the ways we love each other in the midst of and despite of and because of the overlapping proximities that we share in tiny spaces. Coming out of the Shower by Armen Davodian I shut my eyes under the scalding stream, scrubbing off last night's dream, when suddenly I hear your voice again, as though it caught in the clogged drain and was sent bubbling back up from the other world, where you're not my mother this time it's really you. I'm really here. I blink. We do not disappear. Dad left, you say, to shower at the shop, so I don't need to stop just yet. And yet I do, unable to resume old customs, unlike you. In a one bath four person household, we learn what we mustn't see, growing in time, so coolly intimate with one another's silhouette behind the opaque frosted shower screen that once more stands between us two. While at the mirror you apply foundation and concealer, I wash out my hair with rose water shampoo, which means I'll smell like you all day. Mama, I shout, I'm coming out. And as you look away, I knot around me tight your lavender robe de chambre, cinching my waist and clamber out of the tub, taking care not to step outside the cotton mat and drip on the cracked floor you've polished with such zeal. We're mirrored in each tile, yet you'd forgive the spillage or forget what else will you love me despite. Coming out of the Shower by Armen Davodian can be found in The palace of 40 Pillars, published in 2024 by Tin House Press. Thanks to them for permission to use this poem and to Frederick Courtright of the permissions company.
- [15:06]
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Poetry Unbound is Andrea Prevot, Carla Zanoni, Daryl Chen, Sparrow Murray, Chris Heagle, Bill Siegmund and me, Padre Galtuma. Our music is composed and provided by Gautam Srikishan and Blue Dot Sessions.
- [15:20]
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These episodes were made in New York.
- [15:22]
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City on unceded Lenape land. Special thanks to Will Salwin, Nave Yan and Adam Morell at Digital Island Studios in Manhattan. Thanks as well to Frederick Courtright of the Permissions company. Poetry Unbound is an independent non profit production of the On Being Project founded and led by Krista Tippett. This season of Poetry Unbound is made possible by a grant from the Henry Luce foundation, our other funding partners and include the Liana foundation, the Baedale foundation and Engaging the Senses Foundation. Poetry Unbound would be nothing without the listening community. Thanks to all who listen, who read and give through our weekly Poetry Unbound substack or directly to On Being. For links to the substack and to find out more about Poetry Unbound books.
- [16:07]
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And events, visit poetryunbound.org.