Vidmante Jasukaityte
Female writers write with computers.
Some of them with ball-point or fountain pens.
Old and classical sometimes write with pencils,
Especially when travelling, sitting on a bench in the square, on the beach
And when there is nothing else at hand,”they are softer and
Recall olden days.
Women write with their bodies.
They write with their elbows, calves,
They write with their stomachs, emaciated or bloated,
They write with their breasts, clenched jaws, their wrinkled brows,
They write with their thighs, asses and hips,
With spinal column, shoulder blades, the hard, calcified napes of their necks,
They write with smoked trachi, their lung embolisms,
They write with their pericardium and with cardiac arrest, with aneurisms in swollen legs,
Women write with the womb”burning or consumed by fire,
They write with fertility and barrenness”with everything”in which pain is found.
Women write with the moles on their faces, with downy hair, with unplucked eyebrows
With pursed lips, burning mouth,
With the irregular beating of the heart, armpits unshaved,
Women write with hiding places, where female writers hide, afraid,
That women might smother them unintentionally, or squish them to death,
With unwashed plates, messy rooms, out-of-fashion dresses…
They write with a hysteria that makes glass break, mirrors fall to the ground,
Walls split and glass in window frames spring out,
They write with psychological complexes, a childish lack of daring,
With a drowned or walled up crazy love,
They always write with solitude,
They write with knives in hand, goose-berry thorns in the body,
Bare feet, fingers that have never seen a manicure,
They write with nights rent through by passion,
When they wed the entire Cosmos, but this is not called erotica or magic,
They write with ice floes of revenge, which give their pages back to them white like small ice islands…
They write with the past, with ghosts and poltergeists,
They write with pagan deities, lords of the earth and livestock, gods of the underworld and death, gods of uncultivated, uninhabited land and avatars of the elderberry tree, nude goddesses of love driving chariots pulled by doves,
With snake-headed sprites in the shape of a red rooster.
They write with old graves, decayed destinies,
They write with scratchings in the dark, with strides along the table,
Sometimes they write with alcohol or depression, with alien lives,
With men on loan, with their wives of lovers,
They write with history ”with serfs, counts and whips,”
With salt on bodies flogged, made of lapped blood,
They write with the maids of Orleans and with Draculas,
With primal sounds”syllables, screams,
with asteroids they know and aliens from THERE,
They write with illusions which they keep in holding pens, feeding like pigs,
They write with declarations of love furtively spoken once upon a time by someone or other”
They keep them under the bed like rabbits” they don’t require much attention” they eat practically
nothing…
Female writers write with computers, with photos in magazines, with status
in society.
Women write with their hips and breasts, perfect and powerful like those of goddesses,
Wiping off the excrement of society in the moonlight.
The writers reads,”
Thewomen are never forgotten.
2004.6.6
Translated by Geoffrey Vasiliauskas
