Tuesday poem #98 : Lina ramona Vitkauskas : The Four Postmen of the Apocalypse

Crossing the street in unison, stepping from

each corner pole, the symmetry of four postmen

in the rearview, and the shelves of front porches

crucified. Upon backs of sleeping geese,

snowpiles; all the slick metallurgy, the uptalk

and salts, I feel decently Pessoa—said I’ve seen

my work desk and my eyes welled up: these keen

headlights upon the guts of winter dawn, our hazy

sun muted. Church steeples coin-caribou mouths,

plucking mackerel clouds from sky; all the recycled

Santas, puny surface-to-air missiles, the plastic meter

men playing neon violins—bundled to the yes;

the yes of universities, the yes of black cars with

tinted glass and diplomat plates. Yes, the dipshit put it

all into Ecuadorian hair products, the yes of the

conservatory of your heart, which is a parka that lures

me still, a billboard burning. Yo, it’s Donald Duck on the

bumper, because the best thing you can do in life is

show up on time. You can be on the team, accentuate

the air with your vapor, and purr radioactive hymns,

while the cold dead ones lie severed from their roe.

Lina ramona Vitkauskas (b. 1973, Lithuanian-American-Canadian) is the author of the poetry collections:

·         - SPINY RETINAS (Mutable Sound, 2014) :: an epic poem inspired by an I Dream of Jeannie episode, Brautigan’s Trout Fishing in America, David Lynch’s films, and Ashbery’s Girls on the Run; 

·         - Professional Poetry (White Hole Press, 2013) :: poems that creatively address the latest rise of careerism in poetry due to the corporatization of the university system; dedicated to poets who work hard as educators with little pay and no benefits;

·         - A Neon Tryst (Shearsman Books, 2013), an ekphrastic piece speaking to three films—Antonioni’s L’Eclisse, Bergman’s Wild Strawberries, and Frankenheimer’s Seconds;

·         - HONEY IS A SHE (Plastique Press, 2012), which examines the intersection of honeybee CCD (colony collapse disorder) and a dying relationship;

·         - THE RANGE OF YOUR AMAZING NOTHING (Ravenna Press, 2010), collected poems; and

·         - Failed Star Spawns Planet/Star (dancing girl press, 2006), inspired by astrophysical studies of brown dwarfs.

In 2013, Eleni Sikélianòs selected her for first prize in the Henry Miller Memorial Library Ping Pong Journal Award, Pulitzer-finalist Brenda Hillman selected her for The Poetry Center of Chicago’s Juried Reading Award, and she was nominated for an Illinois Arts Council Award by Another Chicago Magazine. She has been published internationally—in the US, UK, Lithuania, Czech Republic, Taiwan, Australia, France, and Canada. Her website is www.linaramona.com.

The Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan.