Dzvinia Orlowsky

Arc

Father, you heaved open the cellar doors
surprised by your weight and strength,
mice scurrying past your feet.

You found a cat's skull,
a canary's beak, a whistle,
a child's metal shovel,

and clothes, dresses—so many,
a doll with a rubber band
tight around its arm.

For years I wondered where
you'd find me, paired
for this life, your spitting image.

Paper Cut

Thin-boned and thin-skinned, I
make my way on an equally thin path,

leaves crumbling like torn, brown backs
of frames, mats removed, glass broken,

scattered in the woods. The sun seeps
yolk-yellow, but today I only see

starved cows on hillsides
pebbles trickled with water.

I survive my own self-portrait.
The smallest red tear of skin

sends my body's temperature up.
My daughter, Raisa, wearily sleeps in front

of the wood burning stove,
the flame on the log sputtering,

like an angry muscleman, she insists,
pounding his way out.

2006 Pushcart Prize winner, Dzvinia Orlowsky, is a founding editor of Four Way Books and a contributing editor to AGNI, The Marlboro Review, and Shade. Her previous poetry collections published by Carngie Mellon University Press include A Handful of Bees (1994); Edge of House (1999); and Except for One Obscene Brushstroke (2003). Her fourth collection, Convertible Night, Flurry of Stones is forthcoming from CMU in 2008. Her poetry and translations of contemporary Ukrainian poets have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, and she recently published a translation of Alexander Dovzhenko's novella, The Enchanted Desna (House Between Water Collections, 2006). Dzvinia Orlowsky currently teaches at the Solstice Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing of Pine Manor College in Boston.

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