Vyt Bakaitis
Vyt Bakaitis is a poet and translator. He is a native of Lithuania but now splits his time between Brooklyn and Chicago. His book of poems are City Country (Black Thistle Press, 1991) and Deliberate Proof (Lunar Chandelier Press, 2010). He is also the translator of Breathing Free (Spuyten Duyvil, 2002), an anthology of contemporary Lithuanian verse, and other books from Lithuanian poets. Several of his translations are included in the anthology World Poetry (W.W. Norton, 1998).
ampersanding
by Shane Vaughan
I still think of you, I say, Even now
Even Now? you reply in that voice
We are having coffee in a dream of Italy
it is hot in a bearable kind of way
& the thought of gelato is on my throat
I know I am dreaming because it is hot
& I do not sweat, we talk
& I do not shake
Garçonasks if we would like to look at the menu.
It is a list of all the times we couldn’t salvage
timecoded with dates beside them
I order a side salad of being drunk
& telling you you’ve changed (18/11)
with a mains of screaming about your stupid
fucking jacket in this stupid fucking weather (12/02)
You elect for a tasty dish of sad sex (01/01)
And meeting for the first time (21/09)
I rest my cigarette on the lip of an ashtray
just as you reach out to brush a feather off the table
& for a moment we skim each other
oh rush, you are sweeter than any ice cream
& hushedly we catch each other’s eye.
I signal for Garçonand he brings the bill
I am alone and a light rain has begun.
Pausing over the menu I finger the desserts
How is the ice cream here, I ask
Monsieur,he says,it is just like you remember
*
After a Storm on Oliver Bay
by Charlotte F.Otten
Bald broken branches and gull feathers
wipe out the radiant energy of the beach,
upturned roots of aspens
spread ghostly fingers in the sky
fumbling for a lost foundation.
Leaves swollen by waves
bloat the disheveled shore,
shove old-smelling memories
into Homer’s nervous lines,
bearing mortality’s ancient angst.
Only blueberries have survived,
swallowing storms as naturally as air,
transforming water into wine
that recalls a wedding in Cana,
and me on my knees swilling handfuls.
Moonlight on Haws
by Charlotte F. Otten
Known all summer-long for its grunge,
the river lights up shabby shores
with glistening clusters in Fall.
Moonlight beguiles with her brightness
showing hawthorns in dazzles of red,
concealing thorns sharp as wolf ’s teeth.
Unheeding, I reach for ripe fruit,
moonlight’s gift to an ungloved Shakespearean
who disregards Edgar’s “sharp thorns”
while memory runs thick with haw jelly
and hawthorns’ red blood stains the fingers,
moonlight sticking to thumbs.