Rimas Uzgiris is a poet and translator whose work has appeared in the Barrow Street, Hudson Review, Paris Review, Poetry Review (UK) and other journals. He is author of North of Paradise (Kelsay Books). Uzgiris holds a Ph.D. in philosophy, and an MFA in creative writing from Rutgers-Newark. Recipient of a Fulbright Grant, a NEA Translation Fellowship, he teaches at Vilnius University.
We followed her in, a stray, the fattest & first, the temple cat./ In a niche by the altar she crouches, watches them come: the/ mad parade we’d wanted, this troupe of heretics — the ass,/ alpaca, gyrfalcon — unbroken line of celebrants, creatures ...
Mother comes to me as I’m making honey cake, / measuring out sugar then whipping eggs. / Never mind that Mother left this earth / eighteen months earlier...
I miss things: swooping, diving, passionate voices/ in several African tongues, so far beyond me/ they might as well have beamed from the constellations.
Here’s the river I stepped in more than twice.// I can’t see them but I know the boats/ are going by in the sturdy fog...
And now you explore the hidden pockets and come up/ with a City Guide (in English) you picked up in Amsterdam./ Why did I keep that? Where were we going? But she’s/ not there to answer
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