About the Author:
Lina ramona Vitkauskas. Lithuanian-American poet and short fiction writer. M.A. in Composition and Rhetoric: Creative Writing, Wright State University (OH). Co-editor of milk, online literary magazine, (www.milkmag.org) with poet,editor, and critic Larry Sawyer. Books: THE RANGE OF YOUR AMAZING NOTHING (Ravenna Press, 2007), Shooting Dead Films with Poets (Fractal Edge Press, 2004, The Meanest Man Contest (mother's milk press, 2000). Publications: Van Gogh's Ear, Rampike (University of Windsor), The Prague Literary Review, The Chicago Review, The Mississippi Review, The Wisconsin Review, Lituanus (Lithuanian Quarterly Journal), La Petite Zine, Drunken Boat, Shampoo, Big Bridge, Bridges (The Lithuanian-American Journal), and In Posse Review’s Multi-Ethnic Anthology (Ilya Kaminsky, editor), among others. Awards: Honorable Mention, STORY Magazine Carson McCullers Award (1999) Now she's writing beginnings of books: Preface to A Step Inside, by Denis Emorine, translated by Phillip John Usher (Ravenna Press, 2006) Forthcoming: The Onion Union, Aufgabe, Melancholia's Tremulous Dreadlocks, Arabesques (Algeria), Paper Tiger (Australia), and Skanky Possum.
from the book:
The First Gardenia
"Give me a museum and I will fill it."
—Pablo Picasso
You are air and I am air
but what we really are (when we dissipate)
are unrelated planets. The rooster
risks nothing, dips to the umbrella
feeds churches and quantum penalties.
Should I have undone the doctor,
cosmologically undone myself,
undone the doctrine in this state
of granite and velvet? Maybe
the universe cleans us
of all the universals. Burning,
the gecko gardenia in silk
strains of skins makes love,
a different one each session
below the Belt.