for Jay
Like a water-skier thrashing and banging
the lake’s surface,
you test your balance
on impossible path.
Given a choice,
I’d rather drop the line
and sink gracefully,
an anchor
in perfect arabesque,
or Alice
slipping through the watery mirror.
I’m ready to set my metronome
to the sluggish pulse of water lilies,
take up residency in sludge, amphibious,
invisible to predators circling above,
chain sawing the calm.
It’s time to fold the world’s chaos
back into the paper,
applaud fruit
ripening on the table
without its tree.
There are two islands
before us. One,
littered with the garbage of lovers.
The other, undisturbed.
We could row there,
together dip our oars.
Let’s syncopate back to whole notes
with a pledge to go on feeling this:
the orchestra sounding its pitch,
trees holding back their leaves,
the first breeze of Mozart
leaving the earth.
Dzvinia Orlowsky is the author of six poetry collections published by Carnegie Mellon University Press. Her first, A Handful of Bees, was reprinted in 2008 as a Carnegie Mellon Classic Contemporary. Dzvinia’s poetry and translations have appeared in numerous anthologies, including A Map of Hope: An International Literary Anthology; From Three Worlds: New Writing from the Ukraine; and A Hundred Years of Youth: A Bilingual Anthology of 20th Century Ukrainian Poetry. Her translation from the Ukrainian of Alexander Dovzhenko’s novella, The Enchanted Desna, was published by House Between Water Press in 2006. She is a contributing editor of AGNI, a founding editor of Four Way Books, a founding faculty member of the Solstice Low-Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing of Pine Manor College, and the founder and director of Night Riffs: A Solstice Literary Magazine Reading and Music Series. She teaches at Providence College. (updated 4/2022)
Orlowsky’s collection A Handful of Bees was reviewed in AGNI 42 by Mary Maxwell.
Orlowsky’s collection Edge of House was reviewed in AGNI 50 by Miriam O’Neal.