Lina ramona Vitkauskas

Your Mark On The World

A radioactive handprint on a wall that no one was supposed to touch,
a Dutch Boy kind of stain that resists an afterglow or perhaps
just a broken bird wing, threading itself like a needle through cement,
a little dandelion pushing her way through the cracks.

It would be swollen with decency while it morally offended you.
It would take hours to learn.
It would require no thought but you'd be blinded by its obvious natural indignance to the status quo.
Your mother would disapprove, but she couldn't peel her eyes away.

It'd be a radio muffled in cars outside the bar,
the song you try to discern strains of through glass panes and aluminum.
You could not cut with it like shears or drink a sip of it in a servile fashion.
You'd have to bow your head in silence, compact last whispers of
doormen in heat into the dumpster, friend,
this is a radioactive handprint infection.
The rest of your life is tomato sauce.

It'd be hard to let go, like listless disintegrating feathers in a plum sauce
A deep-fried personality, maybe like a new dollar ninety-five in a new city.
It'd be morning-skewed icicles, a collection of water for calibrated baptisms.
The television frets a gargantuan top story from a quilt of the handprint.
It's single and now actively pursuing a hot female between the ages of 22 and 21.
It's fretting the radiation waves, this mark on the world.

It'd be a pick-'em mix of jumbled fish eyes in a marketplace jar,
the lens closing in on the part when the people come shrieking out of their tents,
and all the pillars still stand erect and glowing,
glowing like a desert sundae, parfait for one.
It's eighty-sixed this glowing handprint on the wall…it's smeared.
It's needing itself.
Matthew Arnold wouldn't see the ocean for his saliva but on the beach,
on the beach, the ocean is glowing.