Epiphytes 1
for Barbara Barg
1.
Thank you for registering!
Mother mouthed you from a
rye-eyed linen bloom,
borne & bored on a rapeseed bed
(insert the “gendering” of responsible action)
there you were, in your grandmother’s slip,
your very ancient DNA from a
haplogroup of Neolithic proportion,
(I believe you came red-gluten-cotton,
sucking faux-fiber, taut meat
suffocation between teeth)
Mother Earth pinned to your breast
like homework (“C+” “D-”)
reinforcing your synthetic value,
your counterfeit blood & bones
pneumatic token, a digital tempest,
fake breath, alternative girl.
She shaped you, made
hands from paws
hoofs to jaws
sludge to goldleaf replica.
Mother mouthed us false:
the atrophied stars—
gasping fish
drowning
in warped air.
2.
Is it homogametic to save us
(address poetically our planet)
Amazon rams new, national identity
Transparent new brand:
risk-taker,
trailblazer,
innovator,
weaponizer,
soothsayer
You don’t speak
filthy girl
speakEnglish
my clan tongue
casted a dozen swords
welcome to my deep state
They’ll find you,
Whole Food kill you,
stake claim to
land & animal.
They’ll give you dense
history pebbles:
& say, “swallow these.”
You won’t float.
3.
No risk
no reward
No sustainable
action
See “Currency”
See “Insignificance”
See “multiple habitable planets”
Red eye.
Blue note.
Yellow belly.
Green revolution.
The point of the monologue:
reinforce quo, ego
Earth is oily
Earth is classified
Earth is special
Citizen assigns significance
scope & sphere immediately tangible
See “the horizon”
water is lamina
existence dear
yet disposable
consumable
bills (from tree flesh)
coins (from mineral/alloy/rock)
yet for years
no gold in Fort Knox
to back our debt.
4.
Automated authenticity
token oxygen
pumped in;
casino keeps
natives
awake
keeps
humans
enjoy risk
symbol sign
enables us
to avoid
authenticity;
consequence
a void.
Devaluation
civilization.
Disconnect
your genes
from me.
Worms burrow
subterranean.
Think of the clover mite,
so micro red; my mother
so tiny in the Brazil heat.
That’s how I see her now.
5.
Water is lamina — rust, moss, & rot.
Wood anemone plus globeflower equals sex
power: source your senses from fluids.
The Bear staged Eagle’s extinction.
No time to write to your phantoms in uniform.
Unmask each night & investigate
weathervanes for bad bearings.
Keep watch for duplicitous foxes,
seeking eyes in the bottom of your wineglass,
maps that isolate themselves.
As the photo studio burns,
children howl from having to sit still
too long, grabbing their forcefields,
becoming rinds of mother & daughter & son
dying in an organized fashion.
Lina ramona Vitkauskas is the author of MOFA (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Secret Airplanes Press, 2018); White Stockings (2016); SPINY RETINAS (Mutable Sound, 2014); Professional Poetry (White Hole Press, 2013); A Neon Tryst (Shearsman Books, 2013); and HONEY IS A SHE (Plastique Press, 2012). In 2013, she was selected by Eleni Sikelianos for the Henry Miller Memorial Library Ping Pong Journal Award, and in 2009, she was selected by Brenda Hillman for The Poetry Center of Chicago's Juried Reading Award. She has been published in The Vilnius Review, Berfrois, Resist Much, Obey Little (Spuyten Duyvil, 2017), among other publications.