https://armenian-poetry.blogspot.com/2008/06/lory-bedikian-beyond-mouth.html

On the back of every tongue in my family
there is a dove that lives and dies.
At night when my aunts and uncles sleep
the birds comb their feathers, sharpen beaks.
They are carriers, not only of the olive
branch, but the rest of our histories too.
As from the ark, we came in twos
with tired eyes from Lebanon, Syria,
the outskirts of Armenia and anywhere
where safety said its final prayers and died.
Like every simile ever written, the doves
or our tongues are tired and misread.
Dinners begin with mounds of bread, piled
dialogues between the older men.
Near our dark throats, the quiet
birds lurk to watch meals descend,
take phrases that didn’t reach
the truth and spin them into nests.
Now and then, we spit them out in shapes
of seeds, olive pits, or spines of fish.
The men never watch what enters past
the teeth, what leaves their moving lips,
and the doves know this. The women shut
their mouths when they don’t approve
of the squawking laughs. There is a saying
(or at least there should be) that if one doesn’t
believe what is said or true, they can ask
the dove on the back of the tongue
and it will chirp the ugliness or the pitted
truth, of how we choke on what we hide.
“Beyond the mouth” was first published in Timberline.