By Gabriele Labanauskaite.
The Postcard To Alaska
I will inscribe your name on a postcard and send it to
Alaska.
Let the Eskimos peck at each letter through a magnifying
glass:
rumpled breast
in a carton box –
vector trails
showing nowhere –
crumbs alone
and caramel wrappers –
where candies once were
At The Copenhagen Airport
At the Copenhagen airport
A girl vomits in a garbage can
Then
She rises above
The clouds
Leaving behind
The Milky Way –
It stretches the stairs of insomnia
In spheres
Frees itself from
The chiming
Hand rest
We’re already regressing backwards,
darling,
Soon already –
We’ll meet
………………………………………………………..
Soon already –
We’ll meet
The chiming
Hand rest
In spheres
Falling down
Towards the clouds
Towards The Milky Way
Where at the Copenhagen airport
Cactuses blossom
In the girl’s mouth
Film Scenes
Sometimes film scenes seem sharper than
life’s
chili
in them skyscrapers explode
and people, even after a huge catastrophe occurs
kiss warmly and passionately,
not counting
their last seconds of oxygen.
Though sometimes –
and you’re not a more ordinary
hero –
you leave the house having not turned off the gas,
not having greeted your neighbor
and…
loo –
your film runs out.
Before the setting sun sets you still want to
direct the scenes, to cut out the most disillusioned,
yet
someone over there, by the television
really likes your
sobbing…
The Real Mafia
The real mafia meets in
churches-
as the organ plays
they kiss
fingers ringed with gold
Real killers like
cats,
soft furs
and a tear of blood
streaming down
a sleeve.
[The realest ones
don’t like reality].
Freud’s Dream
In the jungle never were days barren of touching
panthers, cobras, tigers –
treading licking in golden frames.
A thick nectar pours from the depths of intoxication
with butterflies, dragons from the east it flies
away…
During your childhood you met many fantastic beasts
Lynx rubbed against your legs,
Snakes whispered sweet little words,
Adorned in scorpion beads.
During adolescence you began to shun your acquaintances
And learned to sleep with a loaded weapon under your pillow
All of your beloved having turned into
Monkeys bounding in wilderness.
When you became an adult, when it receded like a shadow
A shadow, having grown still,
You do not see dreams at all and sleep with a weapon
Placed at the end of your bed.
I Am Electrified
I am electrified –
All of the earth’s volts
Penetrate me
Wrap around my neck,
Dot my back
With radiant stitches.
I am electrified –
With neon lights
The sparkle of skyscrapers
Airplanes twinkling
The flutter
From your computer.
I am electrified –
In micro schemes I count
Sunsets and sunrises,
Which occur all at once
When the mechanized watches have stopped –
I am electrified.
Cars – My Cold Flowers
Cars – my cold flowers
in an engine hard
flower pots
caked
with fuel dust.
Cars – my cold flowers
in factories –
like dolls
in a shop window
they understand everything, but don’t know how
to talk.
Cars – cold, still-budded flowers –
Among the valves, gears and keys
I am
the fairy
of disorderly internal mechanisms
who can’t be saved
by the metal panacea.
Grass Stairs
Grass stairs mute step-echoes
For expectant ears each step is
in
au
dib
le
Piranhas
I live in an aquarium
Among the other piranhas
I learn to swim
To feel the small fish
To swim up near to him
And to astonish
I live and live and live
Among sharp corals and reefs
The glass walls are there
Only to prevent the sleep
Because…
when you break through
to the other side of the mirror
When you break through to the other side of the mirror
You will see another aquarium
Where piranha devours piranha
Where piranha devours piranha
Where piranha devours piranha
Until
There is nothing but water
In the aquarium
Pure Love or Song Of The Liar
I wear a fluttering skirt of mourning
Through three halls
Where the corpses of past loves
Are lain
Although…
I shared with them
Pears apples and plums
Invariable constants
X and Y
Equations of zero sums
But still…
I wouldn’t sacrifice one salty
Nor place flowers withered long ago
For fragrant reviving a single soul.
Translated by Ada Valaitis and Kenneth Smallwood
A pdf of Gabriele’s poetry is available for download.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gabriele Labanauskaite (Lithuania, 1980) is a poet, prose-writer, playwright and book critic. She has a masters degree from Vilnius University in the Theory and History of Literature and studied at Jyvaskyla University (Finland) and Parma University (Italy). She’s currently working on a PhD about the narrative construction of stage plays and teaches history and theory of playwriting at the Lithuanian Music and Theatre Academy in Vilnius. In 2008 she completed the script writer’s course at the New York Gotham Writers Workshop. Gabriele’s work has been published in cultural newspapers and literature almanacks (‘Baltija’, ‘Žiemos žodžiai’) since 1992. In 2003 she started writing stage plays, of which The One that Hurts the Most, Circus and In-fucked won awards at the National Lithuanian Plays Contest and were staged in Finland, Sweden and the UK.
