Aram and Gailyn Saroyan, St. Mark's Church, 1969
Photo by Jayne Nodland
Friendly Persuasion
The body and the mind
Have a talk together
And the mind convinces the body
To go out with it on a date.
Soon afterwards
The mind calls the body up on the telephone
And says,
"Why don't you drop by?"
"When?" the body asks.
"How 'bout this afternoon."
In no time at all the mind and the body
Are doing steady.
Then they get married.
For a while they are very poor
And sometimes they have to go and stay at the body's folks' place
And then they have to stay at the mind's folks' place.
Neither one is a very good place to stay
They decide
And almost immediately they have a child.
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A R A M S A R O Y A N
from Cross-Strokes
Poetry between Los Angeles and San Francisco
edited by Neeli Cherkovski and Bill Mohr
Otis Books
Seismicity Editions
The Graduate Writing program
Otis College of Art and Design
2015
