Volume VI Issue IV: Restoration & Interconnectivity header

Andra Vltavín

Omen


Two relatives I gain from a marriage
that no longer exists pray for a sign
from my father			find one in a Wyoming
			hot springs’ stranger who shows them
			a chunk of meteorite

It’s from the Czech
Republic			which is where		deep down
	my own body is from or at least where
	my soul landed

It’s a healing stone
like the meteorite my father hung around
his neck after his father hung it
around his neck			passed down patrilineally
			so it will never hang around mine

When I say I am jealous				someone asks
	what doors do you keep open
	for signs?			There is no answer
				to this question	I don’t want
a lingering ghost to tap me on the shoulder
	and if my father came healed
		I might not recognize him

Who is my father when he is not
the addictions and what created them?
I don’t know			and so a sign would need to be
			something unexpected		anything
I didn’t intend			though I pretend to intend
everything				It’s not enough to see
his name in the mail			so maybe what
I’m looking for is
exactly this silence
I already have

421 Million Yards


If ever I write an autobiography
	let it be made of string
	—upcycled		repurposed		free	clearance
		wildflower landscape gradient
			homespun angora
			—but then the string
			will need to be threaded
				woven
					crocheted
						knitted
just like rocket wires before a journey
to the moon			—space travel
			is always in my future				Cosmic stitches
will need new names				not single crochet			half-
double crochet			double crochet
	but quarter note			half note		whole note
						treble clef
—a musical naming convention
appropriated for measuring length not of sound
but of loops			And now that the most beautiful scarf
			I have ever seen requires both
			crochet and knitting needles

	this is the moment
	when my British fiber crafts walk
	across my fingertips to Poland					to the Czech
							to Russia
	and knitting patterns
	that never knew the simplicity
	of a miniature shepherd’s crook

This is how I rewrite history
—with thread and yarn and string
across a tangled ancestry
that has little to do with me
until I fashion it from nothing
and next-to-nothing				One dimension
becomes two			which becomes three
			if I add sleeves			and there
						we all are
	in a garment fit for travelling
	from here beyond the stars

Andra Vltavín (formerly K. M. Lighthouse) is the author of Body Until Light, Time Counts Backward from Infinity, and two chapbooks of poetry. The poet is very involved in activism and is learning how to create better systems for people to belong to than patriarchy, capitalism and white-body supremacy. They lead writing workshops; facilitate healing touch rituals; and believe that art, poetry, and aesthetics are forms of divinity. They live the revolutions of queerness and polyamory and are very happily settled with a nesting partner, two bunnies and a spinning wheel at their home in Portland, OR.

@avltavin
http://mermaidsinspace.com/andra

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