IRISH WOMAN WASHING

Before the mirror of a cement toilet in a trailer park at Doolin
She undresses to the waist, plugs the sink, fills it from alternate taps.

She splashes water under her arms, lathers soap between her palms.

I watch her back arc as she bends, her breasts fall, convex –

Two clouds watching from the sky.

The backs of her legs tense when a stream of cold water trickles down 
                                                           her belly.

She glances up, pulls a washcloth between her legs, rubs her crotch;
Finished, she checks her face for blemishes.

This is the way women have washed for centuries.

This is the way, in a Degas pastel –
Light catching on the curve of a back
A rainbow lying in a pool at the feet –
The toe dried carefully – the hair tied in a knot –
Combed from the roots.

All of us lined up – cow-eyed, sleepy, hungry at the sink –
mild, fiery girls, not yet knowing that in a moment the world will change –

In the cold early morning air, half an hour, alone.


PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG WOMAN
LORENZI DI CREDI: FLORENTINE 1459/60-1537

Although I've probably reincarnated countless times by now,
Here I am, immobile, in this painting

My hands crossed at the wrists, elbows arthritic, 
Caught as if hacked off already in Shakespeare's fantasy.

Between my index finger and thumb 
I rub a wedding band –

A severe symbol.  They dressed me in black,
Which must mean I am a widow, and put a veil

around my head;  set me against a November sky –
Spindly, prickly branches poke at my back,

And remnants of an European mini ice-age
Can be glimpsed in the background.

Today the BBC announced that in Afghanistan
Women are required to wear veils at all times,

And even must fashion tight nets to cover the eyes –
To hide her vision, to blind her, to bind her,

To the whip, the grind, the trough,
And to love her, always, to love her.


AN AURA

Having just given birth
I lay on the dock
undulating
over the river;
watching
as tousled cygnets swam
in iridescent circles.

That week only I had an aura.
I wore it
around my head
my waist
my feet 
(wrinkled at my ankles
like baggy nylons).

That week only
the incision burned 
into me and the water
could rock me
in just that way
as my baby slept
in the tall grass 
beside me –
his face like a baked apple.


BALTIC LAIMA

In Eastern Europe Baltic Laima is still regarded as a Fate.  She is the 
spinner and weaver of human life.  She attends at birth and determines 
long life or short – good or bad.  She is the owner of the inexhaustible 
spring of life, the miraculous springs located beneath large stones or in 
caves.  She is the fertility of nature.

		For a weaver all the world
		Is textile.  Look – do you see

		The threads which bind us –
		Veins of color, textured
		
		Arteries.  The weaver sees
		Us all twisted – arms and legs
		Entangled.

Until the second half of the nineteenth century in Lithuania and Latvia 
a birth ritual was practiced in saunas.  The ritual was presided over by 
the grandmother, the matriarch of the family, and only women participated.  
Laima was invoked to insure a safe, successful birth.

		What does it mean to be
		The inexhaustible source
		of life?

		Energy dissipating, 
		Rhythms sharpening, 
		She calls out

		To the world beneath water.  
		Wade thigh deep, Laima hisses.

After the birth a duck was sacrificed for the Goddess Laima.  The grandmother 
would kill it with a wooden ladle.  Kneeling down, participants ate of the duck.

		Beat her with your ladle
		The duck accepts her fate.

		Her feathers, iridescent,
		Trap light, reflect it back
		Beneath the mother's chin.

		Now eat the duck
		Raw.  Divide it
		With your sisters.
		Place a piece
		Of warm flesh 
		In each out-stretched palm.

Wooden ladles in the shape of a duck have been discovered at a number 
of Neolithic sites throughout Latvia and Lithuania.

		You must not let any man
		See you carve the ladle.

		You must chip the wood 
		Smooth – like the pelvic bones
		Of a she-dog or cow.

		Think of the place inside you
		Where a child grows –
		That hard smooth 
		Pear-curved place 
			and carve
			carve
			carve

In Ireland, during Imbolc, February first, the feast of purification, 
Brigit, Laima's Irish double, was propitiated by the sacrifice of a fowl, 
buried alive where three waters met.

		Across the sea
		Where Stream,
		Spring and Sea meet

		Stands Bridget, your double,
		She is just like you
		Thank God.

		She stoops, picks up
		Frayed ends of bright thread
		Twists them around her elbows.

		Fingered
		Fibers pull loose;
		The bird-woman

		Knots them
		Sends them

		Beneath the sea and back to you, Laima.

Born in Teaneck, New Jersey, Laima Sruoginis grew up in New Jersey, but spent her high school years studying at the Lithuanian Gymnasium in Germany. Later she studied English and German literature at Rutgers University, but was able to spend a year abroad in Lithuania in 1988-1989 studying Lithuanian literature at Vilnius University. Laima Sruoginis is a graduate of Columbia University's Masters of Fine Arts program in Creative Writing; she is a poet, prose writer, and literary translator. Presently she is a Fulbright lecturer in Lithuania teaching courses in literary translation, creative writing, and the American multicultural novel at Vilnius and Vytautas Magnus Universities. Laima Sruoginis has published poems and literary translations in various American and European journals and anthologies. "Sruoginis' work provides the opportunity to talk about a characteristic typical of work by young writer's of Lithuanian descent - the fact that a certain ethnic mentality, or world view, is still brought within the larger context of modern literature. Archetypes, typical to a certain Lithuanian mode of de-coding the world, find their way into these young writers' work, as well as a reliance on folklore and myth." (Rima Pociūtė)