Category: Uncategorized

There are still squirrels in the park today
The sun still rose and the birds still sang
The leaves are falling and the train is running late
Everything is different
Everything is the same

The air is fresh between wildfires
The morning sky is pink and gray
The wan smile of a stranger passing by
Everything is different
Everything is the same

Red autumn leaves blanket dead rotting lawns
Obscuring worms and spiders
If I can’t see them, are they there?
If I don’t feel them, are they real?

There are still squirrels in the park today
The sun still rose and the birds still sang
Nothing has changed but everything has
Everything is different
Everything is the same

I go to church on Fridays now.
On the walk over I spray perfume on my wrists and rehearse my lines,
When I bow my head there are no bells to distract me.
The pastor’s wife scolds me for my makeup, my perfume,
tells me to give my mother a call.
You’ve become 老外 (“foreigner”), she says,
you worry too much about the world,
and you forget God and your mother.
For a moment I think she might be right, but then
the worship team plays an old hymn
from when I was five, maybe, or fifteen,
and I am reminded that I have never forgotten anything.
I smoke a cigarette on the walk back.

In class I argue in my second language
about what it means to be a good person.
I will never win this argument, I can
use esoteric words,
quote Ovid and Augustine in Latin,
but they are not forgetting that I am an Asian girl
who goes to church on Sundays Fridays.
Some arguments can only be won by the right people.
The white girls look surprised when I say fuck,
I want them to see me smoke a cigarette.

My life in America sums up to this:
a continuous attempt to justify my presence.
A man told me I do not understand beauty,
so now I write poetry to prove him wrong.
I have proven nothing thus far,
I do not know what makes a good poem,
just like I do not know what makes a good person,
or a good daughter.
I came to this country believing in a monstrous world,
and it is very big indeed.
To be a person big enough for it
one must forget some things,
or become more persons.

A man told me I love you
but he was looking past me,
at the writing on the wall,
or at the me in the other room.
A man told me it was finished,
and I relearned what my father taught me ages ago:
there is no graceful way to become unloved.
I have tried so hard to grow up I have started growing sideways.

But this is what they don’t tell us:
the world is as big and small as you choose.
You can have your small world,
you can have many worlds,
if you want it.
You have to really, really want it.

I call my mother and tell her,
that I have had my heart broken in the land of opportunity,
that I am learning how to mold my grievances into something
a little more human,
that I am realizing how to be many things all at once
without splitting into a million pieces.
How American, she replies,
Richard’s sister got into Yale.

These days I make the air lighter to breathe.
I practice growing.
I practice losing.
I practice knowing some things.
I still do not know what makes a good poem,
and maybe I never will.
I write one anyway.

Steps on fallen petals in the sunny courtyard
roses and tulips, gone with winter
each step so soft
and now asleep so hard in the next room
I sip coffee and breathe on my own.

I open a window
sirens streak down Venice Boulevard
little birds call into the gusty evening–
a warning.

I am a mother now and my clothes map the day
my heart layers thick like full pots of red paint and swirling turquoise
I hold my baby gently when he wakes at midnight
pebbles striking the windows
we sit and rock in rhythm to the eerie wind requiem.

Ash falls, scraps of earth and mortar
drifting onto the foam puzzle pieces that line the floor of our balcony
my son’s wooden car, a single flower pot,
the plastic table lined with coffee rings
we bring it all in.

Little toes curling in sandy water
feeling the sea for the first time–
now we are barricaded indoors
breathing this air could lead to permanent damage
we strip the internet for information on how to keep his lungs safe.

I hold him tightly in my arms
rosebud cheeks and little lips
we zoom out of town.

Museums, indoor play places that end in exclamation points like
Explore IT! and Rivers and Lilies! FUN!
the Westfield Mall
we visit Target and Bath and Bodyworks
my son has learned to say “hi!” and “buh-bye!”
he greets all the shopkeepers
the Cinnabon employees know us by name.
Blossoming, my tiny flower
filled now with his own dreams.

Finally some relief
rain brings better air but alas,
my little son has stopped asking to go outdoors.

The Brain one of the most important organs in the human body
One that allows us to create memories
Like the ones we love
The ones we hate
The ones that make us sad
The ones that makes us glad
Like going to the amusement park with friends
Like your first kiss
Like the ones you look at and think why did I do that
But those are essential to Mature and Grow
Like your first fight
Your first mistake
Your first Love
Your first time you almost kissed
And your first heart break

Translated from Lithuanian by Irma Šlekytė. Thank you!

I’ve never seen it raising a revolver, ready for
a slap of betrayal. I`ve never witnessed it tossing soil
on a three-year old’s coffin, caressing an unloved one,
writing
the last letter, holding a hand of the one who’s departing:
So, they say,
I have no right to gather so much heaviness in my elbows
and
forearms. I have no right, they say, to not move my wrist
bones.

I know I have to move these arms for the sake of the
bedridden,
for those marked with age spots, for those who’ve lost
everything,
for those whose limbs were torn off by shrapnel.

Hanging off the edge of the bed, on a frayed bedsheet,
despite
all the scolding; persuading, ultimatums, 1 cannot stroke my
^
^
child’s head –
my hand grows heavy, because, I believe, as soon as I
touch him, the soil
will start pouring onto him.

I fight using different shapes of blackness, with no blood
flowing to the ten
little fingers,
but ifI’m called, if we once again need to stand hand in
hand, I promise you world
my hand,
for a short respite from an unworldly heaviness.

spirits
still sweep this shore…
long dead voices whisper
warnings of the sheer senselessness
of war

Often,
we find ourselves
gripping at wolves without
teeth, so that we won’t be rare meat.
Well, my

boyfriend’s
best friend’s classmate
is a fox; of maple
shine, like our Canadian fall,
leaves spread

across
the fermented
sidewalks reaching beneath
the bridge I kissed him on, over
homework;

yes, I
figured there was
anecdotal research
to be had for Shakespearean
playwrights.

But the
fox still had teeth,
and I knew he had yet
to dress up and devour red meat,
at this.

Well, it
was on every
menu, was not this thing?
Always a chef’s favourite, I
recall.

Perhaps
my professor,
the Lammergeier in
dress pants, could explain why rare steak
was so

very
expensive in
the first place? Maybe, just
maybe, he could even try some—
but, oh,

that would
prove to be crude.
Besides, professors ate
marrow of deceased grades, Murnau,
and the

thought of
Nosferatu
dining students—order
of red meat, red wine, a napkin,
and zines!

Well, then,
maybe wolves with
teeth can walk my sister
home from the rock gymnasium,
and then

greet me
at the door, with
my mom glued to her screen,
watching women serving red meat
to mice,

hogs, and
bears, clearly starved
for the chef’s favourite—
just some rare meat, and a fork, please!
Well, it’s

just that
easy to ask.
I promise you, Skeeter,
it isn’t the end of the world if
you just

ask for
a fork, napkins,
maybe some wine, a zine—
if you’re nervous—a pretty grin
for that

oh-so
lovely lady.
Truly, gripping at wolves,
it’s as though we’ve all lost our teeth!
Well, just

know that
many of us
are far too picky to
order the chef’s special today,
the next,

and so
forth. We aren’t
rare meat, but we grip at
wolves without teeth, rare meat, tellies,
and zines

Deathly.
Pale Performance
Dying, Growing, rotting
A peaceful passing point
Inevitable.

Sleepless
Jittery love
Tossing, turning, longing.
Comfort but no warmth, you took.
My heart.

Vile minds
Weavers of sin
Non-replicable, raw
Blood baked enigmas rooted in
Black rust.

Nighttime
Rest with my love
The peace between work days
Is the sweetest time of comfort
And care