A
SIGH IS A BACKWATER TO A SCREAM*
I
was forever-yet-brave-enough to be nothing.
And
the largest mouth was forgiveness.
And
I did not kiss it.
And
I became the thinking—a mind stuck
and
distanced from corpus.
And
I discovered myself while avoiding myself.
I
picked wounds you plucked from past arrangements.
I
never had to articulate anything.
I
simply sequenced my expiration upon
the
translation-trauma-teletype, musical score of geometric
first
generations, the space between notes so final.
Our
outlines pronounced in the air—a theremin scrawl.
They
threw bottles, lit matches, and needles.
They
pinned a planetary memory upon my lapel— _
I
bled through my vest.
I
became a contraction around an object.
Kaip
šnipas kuris pamiršta. **
I
tore up all my lists.
Refugee
daughter, compressed. A litany of gaslit silences.
Burnt
print remains a tradition, the urgency of distrust.
All
of this, and yet, the ancient computer still sleeps.
*Lorca
**A spy who forgets (Lithuanian)
Sound collaboration of this poem with Hamilton-based artist
Man Made Hill:
https://linaramona.com/2024/12/29/man-made-hill-lrv-collaboration/
Collage:
Verse, written in blood with a straw (2022)
Inspired by an artifact in the Verzetsmuseum (Resistance
Museum) in Amsterdam. When we are vulnerable, we can draw great protection from
truth, find stability or even some beauty in chaos. We must have courage to
live in a challenge.
AN
ÜMWELT* INSIDE A G-FORCE
I
escaped from an aquarium of plecos,
arrived
at a wild, yet-corruptible forest where
non-existent
blood stays buried.
There
is a line of warriors who fuel my last
pistons.
Laid flat by velvet relatives, I call to our
trees,
hear the voices of atoms within them.
The
spirit sightline coagulates.
There
is a viscosity of when it blinds creation,
deliberation,
tradition. Now liquified claws and
the
pulp of a beaver’s plum, let’s crank
the
wheel of impermanence. I am dreaming of
the
prehistory of our lives.**
*The world as it is experienced by a particular organism.
** Akhmatova
Collage: Being settled (2022)
Things aren’t as they appear, most apparent in
self-reflection. Superficiality and subjectiveness unfortunately create the
most noise—clouding pure being and wisdom. There is no lasso of finality. We
are infinitely evolving moment to moment. Security is man-made. Leonora
Carrington reminds us to remain a mystery to ourselves. Soldiers in a line
ready to die for peace. What do we know about the aquarium from which we
originate?
Lina Ramona Vitkauskas is a
Canadian-American-Lithuanian formerly from Chicago, living in Toronto. She is
an award-winning, published poet & video poet. She was a 2020 recipient of
a PEN America grant for her development of an experimental poetry collection
that adapted poems from Vsevolod Nekrasov and Bill Knott. She was also the
voice of George Maciunas’ mother in the documentary, GEORGE (directed by
Jeffrey Perkins) screened at MoMA and in Vilnius. Her work has been most
recently featured in/at: Film Video Poetry Society (Los Angeles); Octopus Film
Festival (Gdansk, Poland); John Gagné Contemporary Gallery (Toronto)Post-Future
Era | with Kunel Gaur, Justin Neely, and Confusions (Ben Turner); Poetic
Phonotheque (Denmark); MOCA Toronto (public installation); SIFF (Moldova);
Newlyn Film Festival (UK); Festival Fotogenia (Mexico); Midwest Poetry Fest
(US); Vienna Video Poetry Festival (Austria); and the International Migration
& Environmental Film Festival (Canada). Her website is linaramona.com.