Where the Tympanuchus Roam
Galen, I’m going down to the well
to collect the bile in buckets, to exact
the shape of spleens, supple as desserts,
to interrogate modern medicine
as surgeons dash across the teletype,
nuzzle the cold salt, attempt to mend
trees, and void popular lacerations.
Among the blood instruments,
so well-arranged against the moss,
patients wear the thievery of apostropherubber,
feathers. Simply imagine the
phyllotaxy, all extrinsic and Medieval,
decisive as calcium peppermint. You
create this lust for fluids, and now lungs
as practical wounds or kidneys as deaf
as broth. Yet in attachment blossoms
fall, and in aversion weeds spread.
This connective tissue as divine
as wishbone to universe skin.
It arrives: here in bleach pleats,
warm bliss with stethoscope precision.
Our Pubic Century
Poppy stars, come home to me,
you are my little test prawns!
and bring the litmus of being. The bias of celestial skin.
Spread all of your fears onto this Dictaphone.
Be the cough syrup, a submarine, _____ and seamless.
We demand pubis. Perhaps some custard as well.
Below the orchard is a blue
we’ve been breathing in for centuries.
It is already November.
Come for a feast and practice with me.
Perform an acceptable freshwater preservation technique.
Carve galaxies from the universal yam.
I’ll be the dapper snapper.
and you’ll scream, little prawn.
You’re a star.
Lina ramona Vitkauskas (Lithuanian-American-Canadian) is the author of Spiny Retinas (Mutable Sound, 2014); A Neon Tryst (Shearsman Books, 2013); Honey is a She (Plastique Press, 2012); The Range of Your Amazing Nothing (Ravenna Press, 2010); and Failed Star Spawns Planet/Star (dancing girl press, 2006). In 2009, Brenda Hillman selected her for The Poetry Center of Chicago’s Juried Reading Award, and she was nominated by Another Chicago Magazine for an Illinois Arts Council Award. Publications include The Awl (forthcoming), Coconut (forthcoming), Requited, DIAGRAM, TriQuarterly, The Chicago Review, The Toronto Quarterly, VLAK (Ed. Louis Armand, Edmund Berrigan), White Fungus (Taiwan; recently displayed at MoMA), and more. She is the marketing director of the Chicago School of Poetics and co-editor of the 14-year-running online literary magazine, milk magazine (featuring Robert Creeley, Wanda Coleman, Ron Padgett, Michael McClure, and Japanese surrealist, Yamamoto Kansuke, among others). For 11 years, she has been a part of Chicago’s poetry community in many capacities — as a curator, reader, collaborator, co-founder, organizer/facilitator, instructor, literary arts nonprofit director, and contest judge.