down the mother’s line, ostinato

When the hen sees the egg, she believes she is faced with something impossible.
And with a pounding heart, with a violently pounding heart, she does not recognize it.
- Clarice Lispector

between us: look there, the dappled ones 
look at the women: girls + mothers andromedan strewn about
bound in her constellation sirrah alamak mirach, light trickling
+ dew glinting on punčka, her song punctured quarter notes in a cage
her plumage in tatters
+ even when the child hides, hand
over its eyes, even when its fate is shrouded, it sees, sees the mother
constellations, sees fixed star + comet, only later does the
first astronaut arrive searching + exploring what the mother had long
since seen, the first astronaut, he’s lusting after dust, yearning for origin
+ for provenance, but down the mother’s line she knows:
if a pregnant woman isn’t given what she craves
the child will bear many spots
old balkan proverb

mark it well: far too many, way too many dalmatian backs are thus
the grandmother’s back + her mother’s back, the great-grandmother’s
the adulteress the slut (they said) the one who birthed a dappled child
a beastly bastard a cute little doll that soon was orphaned
neža, as the fleeting mother dies after it shrieked

we’re yugoslav women, dappled women, ženske, our
births blemished from the beginning, millions of marks leap
forth from our wombs, a relay race passing on paintbrushes
between daughters + mothers wet with black or chestnut ink,
our freckled bodies – shhhhh, pssst
pikčasta ptička v pikčasti kletki
thwart the light

sisyphus on the beach

day in day out gazing toward the mainland, roar of the sea
an island lashed by murderous currents day in day out

no one’s ever been able to escape, not one of them ever
said a word, the gunshot wound clouds his eye, in + out

year in, year out, only twenty-two + then one year more
+ another, seven long tortures long, he rolls stone after stone

year in, year out from the hollow to the highest point + down
again: seven years, seven barren saecula, dying in increments

year in, year out the grandfather, the stonemason, a rock-solid
will day in, day out, in + out he is a sisyphus on the beach

duša, senza voce

in the east of a fairytale land on the right bank of the krka
lies župeča vas some call it supetschendorf + there
she takes note of him for the first time
just come of age
today a great-grandmother, back then a girl,
a seamstress sewing stage dresses + costumes
her joy
at the national theater at the drama in ljubljana it’s her
duša počkaj the dearest: kako je bila počkajeva očarljiva!
počkajeva, počkajeva the great soul the greatest (kdo se boji
virginije woolf, ples v dežju, cvetje v jeseni), the famed
počkajeva who advises the great-grandmother, woman to woman:
hide your mole-marked hands
before you meet him, slip into gloves
of white lace

+ he? there he stands, shrapnel above his brow, drawn
out from beneath the corpses, a seven-year sisphus on the beach
now he stands before her
threshold of a new life