Features


Baker's Dozen


Lina Ramona Vitkauskas

 
   

MISSIONARY OKIAGARI1



Now this quiet seems quiet. 

Now these pallid proclivities. 

Now I swallow hard behind the chickadee tree,
 
institutional glass, ugly starfruits.
 
Now little Poetry Priest gets up. 

Now thick, round rainmaker tightens laces
 
woven through bootholes. 

Now seahorses swallowing my toes.
 
Now here's your big brash girl-

with a spadix in her teeth, wanting so much.


1 Okiagari-koboshi, "the getting-up little priest" is a traditional Japanese doll. The toy is made from papier-mâché and is designed so that its weight causes it to return to an upright position if it is knocked over. Okiagari-koboshi is considered a good-luck charm and a symbol of perseverance and resilience.




HOW TO DISCERN A LOTUS FROM A PINWHEEL



For our problems & pleasures 

wear this poetry tuxedo, it's a put-on 

close-up up-front look at the orgasm
 
electronic, mechanical, public, & fun. 

Pick fresh hourglasses from the people pile 

at your smooth, smooth party (strip Boggle) 

holy lasers & articulate survival; hey, lift up my 

sundress, coffee cup-let's go free-wheelin' & fuck. 

At "Make-out Central" French Kissing in the USA, 

brass braces & silver tacks, marbles blue & 

Jills & Jacks, shafts & mines crying OH JOY 

this poetry pleases me, I'm pub-lushing. 

How many times should we ... (until we're exhausted)
 
We officer & non-gentleman
 
get lippy, trippy, break Brakhage 

stone lenses, Neolithic nipples.
 
Listen, I love you, no one.
 
Spinach quiche minis.
 
Exact science our po-yems,
 
rhyming panties! Off you go! This way.ten paces...then run.
 
Want my money back venom-medals as guns.
 
THE CIA & THE KGB found yr poems
 
on Craigslist world domination, pussy,
 
insomnia, fist. "Learn to meet beautiful women 

& never be lonely again." 

A call-letter-radio-static-frequency-non-visual-zen.
 
Words are cordless. Words are free.
 
In motels, elevators-kidnap me. 

From the skies her eyes shower lace bras, 

crude oil, & trash get a girl or fine 

lady-friend while they last. 





CONFESSION



If you want to confess something to me, you really don't need a hammer. Take me to the banks of a
 
new country, & between the breaks of waves & the span of your imprecise fingers, whisper the nails
 
of your sins into sheets of rain between us, admitting all of your tin-can intentions; curl into the 

depths, into a wretched helix of guilt only to rise to the death of a gull-greased sky, kiss blank
 
nothings against my spine; shatter with your cries the stoic verdigris spire of a neighbor's once
 
majestic Xanadu, & when you have become so very sorry for the animals that fuel your fiber &
 
delusion, then, perhaps, I will forgive you. 

But probably not.