Poems by ​Triin Paja 

​Riverlight


the sky is precisely you: the ribs
of a starved boy.

the sky is a burial for all water
and when we searched for drowned cattle

we looked above. we looked,
scarcely seeing, as one-eyed dogs.

the childhood cattle never drowned:
the river drowned in them.

still, the sky is precisely you, the sky
is your mouth haunting my mouth.

hear the old animal bending
to eat the river’s mouldered water lilies--

I have also eaten out of the bowl
of such loneliness: wild strawberries

among weed-eaten graves. you do not reply
for you are already in a house of ferns

and the river flows more quietly.
barnacles blanket crystallized skulls

or stones. the sky opens again
and it is precisely you:

a torn photograph of your shoulder blade.

and the cattle below and above,
and the riverlight flowing into

and out of their bodies.

​

Fostering


awakening, I find only the sun,
an animal frozen in a winter cloud.

outside, a small boy looks
to a seagull crying on a chimney.

he could be a man but as he looks
to a seagull in a city of seagulls

he is a child. a woman walks
so slowly, as if her body 

held the weight of war letters.
you know nights are unkind

even if lit by the moon’s candelabra
so I hide the scraps of paper

saying six cygnets were fed to death
by good-hearted citizens. alone,

I remember two village boys entering
my home, scattering berries

on the floor, crushing them. alone,
I wonder what evokes the cruelty of boys.
 
the cries of the seagulls stir you,
the birthmarks on your back

trembling with sensuality.
on the table, beside us,

the wilted necks of dry poppies.

Triin Paja lives in rural Estonia. Her poetry has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Portland Review, Pleiades, Cincinnati Review, and Room, among others. She is the author of two poetry collections in Estonian, Nõges (Värske Raamat, 2018) and Ürglind (Tuum, forthcoming) and has won The Betti Alver Literary Award and The Juhan Liiv Prize for Poetry. Her poetry in English has been nominated for a Pushcart, Bettering American Poetry, Best of the Net, Best New Poets, and the Rhysling Award.

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