A journal of art + literature engaging with nature, culture, the environment & ecology

Two Poems by Mariya Deykute

Mariya Deykute, USA-Kazakhstan 

 

Japan Kills 333 Minke Whales

 

Where anger swells

Where the drams drum up a dread

There you will find me

A bright blood flower for your crown

 

Where the boats eat seas

Where the sweet sap drips into the heart

We shall hold tight to a rope

We shall—

 

What brings you to a whale’s funeral, my hermit shell?

The mistaken scent of dead bees

The sidewalk littered with stars

In the breakstones satyrs weep

Their reeds waterlogged

 

A man can leave his human core on land

Murder crawls into the shell and swelters

 

The whale sang his song for no one else

Where his belly swells

I will bring flowers

Where his heart swells

I will bring flowers

Where his eye lies blind

I will bring—

 

Tambourines, tangerines, tan knees

Under the moss inside the water—

Where the satyrs weep, they weep for me

 

You hold a degree in gun worship

Milk milkweed

Where my grandmother kept the bread

You will find me

A warm stone to lay on your liver

 

A man can hold a harpoon to a pregnant star

even as his fish heart his man heart his milkfed heart wails

 

What brings you to a carnival of trees, quicksilver?

The sky aching, a live manatee, a lost whale

 

Come here

Where the stones open their hungry mouths

Where the bricks open their tender mouths

Where the sky suckles them raw

 

Sandy’s Song 

Mariya Deykute is a Russian and American poet, translator and educator. A graduate of the UMass: Boston MFA program, Deykute currently lives and works in Kazakhstan. Her poetry and essays have most recently appeared in Soundings East and Seventh Wave Magazine.

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