LOWDOWN KIND OF WOMAN The mollusk a woman's body remains, with common bonds to wind and water, a random eye-blink, a longing from a granulated bit of rather low-grade, blown sand that slipped past the gatekeeper of consciousness on a dare and set up for a lifetime of living in a suite of apartments belonging to the millionaires Soul, with a side-window that once presented an enjoyable view of a statue to Freedom; now though, the windows have heavy drapes drawn across them, since the weird woman living there, having been raised in a suburb famous for its beatings, drunks, and curses (a scrap pried for the lowest underside, with no inclination to shed old habits), showed no hesitation in killing an actress who dreamed of dramatic parts and after wrapping her first in a small rug bricked her up inside a deep crack in the basement wall, next to the sprout-letting, rat-gnawed potatoes; the pallid sophist had muttered something about having rights of choice and free will before she dropped, head smashed in at only the second blow from a doorknob. So give up on illusions, you women with common bonds to wind and water; your usual weapons will get you through the skirmishes; you're done in anyway by the simpleton inhabiting each of your bodies for one purpose only: that it too, when the gong ultimately sounds, will yield before the pearl nurtured inside its depths. Translated by Vyt Bakaitis MEASURING BOTTOM There is no stick that reaches to gauge the full depth we all sink to, at some point in our lives. A stick, when submerged, will jump from the water and float away, half-immersed along the surface, like an alligator in its element, indistinguishable, monotonous, entirely satisfied; with a jeer at distancing itself from you, plunging the heft of its autumn attire in what may well be the deepest part of pooled water. Freshwater fish twitch their lips in amazement; it's as if they have something important to tell the intruder, and the sense of their words have to convey is far too deep for it ever, even after a lapse of years, to be understood. But for the time being, it's enough to grasp whatever you can from observing that you have similar paddles to get you where life has a dying need to be: out on top. For it is only an age-old absorption in the circumstances you meet with a time that incapacitates breathing: these are left to guide you out of unexpected situations, as comic interrogators and observers sometimes turn themselves into the poor critters in an experiment, subverting their own instincts by the strongest scientific zeal, and yet what's most weird about it is: their accounts make no mention of reaching bottom, because there is no stick to gauge such a depth as, it appears, you have witnessed. Translated by Vyt Bakaitis NO DISPUTING TASTE I had a liking for these elegant apartments. The traditions I respect can scrape solid clumps from feet that have been tromping the wet autumn field for a while, like this small rug of crocodile scales by the main door, near the wooden knocker hanging the way a cross typically gets hung. My unfailing animal sense perceived right away that my own hide may yet be applied to cover one of those superbly upholstered seats, on feeling the pull of which a guest runs the risk of forgetting what he came for. I was fascinated as well by the antique grand, a Triumph, with all imprints from fingers which had touched it wiped away carefully, so that a stealthy elimination of vital signs might enhance the roster of unsolved crimes. With still-lifes and water scenes on walls draped in a dark blue, like medals on the uniform of a general rotated to reserve status: what elaborate care had attended their hanging to delight the guests, but mainly the owners themselves. That's why I consigned myself briefly to the peace and calm of things around me, until the dishes descended from the Himalayas of a carved sideboard to remind me with the tinkling of their talk and its fragrant content that there was no beauty to be had on an empty stomach. Elegant and lovely everything was, set just so. Only the oval mirror in a silver frame induced the first screeching intimations of doubt, when I happened to glance into it and saw a long-haired madonna with a fixed and frozen rubbery grin, like some Mickey Mouse from Disneyland; even though the drowned man's sweep to my short butch-cut was the last word from a suicidal cutter. How I'd like to stay faithful, not to her absurd art but to his inarticulate all-embracing knowledge! So I take off my head to the dear hostess in these apartments, she's been embroidering her small pillow for over twenty years in fear of not finishing it in her lifetime, so that instead of me the worms slithering from eye-sockets in my skull would be dancing to the insane fandango with a universal title everyone knows: "Sorry, dear lady, but Death is death." Translated by Vyt Bakaitis

Tautvyda Marcinkevičiūtė cuts an intriguing figure among younger Lithuanian poets: bohemian, feminist, translator of Sylvia Plath into Lithuanian, Marcinkevičiūtė is an experimental poet, the author of five collections of poetry, and many translations of English and American poetry into Lithuanian. She is married to Gintaras Patackas, and lives in the city of Kaunas.