Poems from 2017 issue of Vilnius Review—so grateful to Marius Burokas for publishing them!
A sample:
—
Citizen (Lina)
I braided my hair until I found a bloody stalk,
yanked up with a sharp breath, as if I’d drowned.My dreams of Gediminas:
his tungsten ribcage,
fangs flashing,
corpus blown apart,
singular carbon flecks
Lupus*-born.I severed myself, stabbed past nakties langai,
shadowed a flax-sprout child
spinning about the market,
her ankle ribbons stained & torn.Vilnius streets sought me in shop windows.
Then creamy, desolate, iced faces
retaliated me for being elsewhere native.
I transformed myself in her freezing rivers—
Lietuva burst a floret, yare devil, and a pixy.*Lupus: Latin, wolf constellation