The golden heads peek

through a fortitude of green blades,

have reached just the right pitch of yellow

to rest and droop in safety.

No more performance needed for the day,

except a final nod and song

within a gold sound bowl.

My own blond head expires on the couch,

listening to soft music.

The Vilnius Pink Soup Festival (Šaltibarščiai Fest) is a real annual event in Lithuania that celebrates this omnipresent summer soup. It has actually featured a giant 50-meter pink soup slide, a 362-meter-long banquet table, and participants dressed as ingredients—like eggs, beets, and kefir cartons.

Lithuanian pink cold beetroot soup

Pink has always been my favourite colour.

When I first saw this word,

I couldn’t believe its length—

a stack of consonants and vowels at the end:

rsc and iai.

My Anglo eyes squinted at the two is

as if they were guarding the a…

the first letter of my name—Andrea.

Their hidden protectiveness

took on a certain charm.

My Prayer, in Spring 2024 Issue of BlazeVox

My prayer is for self-sickness, a sickness when the self gets lost in a big sea of itself and can’t find anyone and or anything to hang onto.

Even a log is too difficult to grasp, resists any pull, springs to another log as if for protection.

A dolphin veers in another direction as if facing a shark, and even a shark is uninterested, finds such prey unappetizing as an empty shell…

Double Vision, in Spring 2024 Issue of BlazeVox

I am jetlagged from flying across 16 time zones, back to Vancouver from Southern Taiwan, my body still vibrating after 48 hours, seeing double:

smoky air, shrouding hills, human moods versus Granville Island air scented with essential oils from its tourist shops, boutiques perfuming and enlivening people and dogs;

my brother’s dogs walking freely up…

Never Russian, Never Erased, in Anthology Chaos, Crises, Conflict by Moonstone Arts

My Lithuanian American father would rage whenever someone encroached on his space.
Once in childhood, he and I were cycling home, and a car came alongside, ignoring us, coming too close. So he yelled at the driver, his face as scarlet as Lithuanian beetroot soup.

The driver stopped in the middle of the street and got out. The two shouted at each other…

Grandmother’s Quilt, in Writing Resilience Anthology by MadHat Press

I pull my ancestors around me, imagining a warm and cozy great-great grandmother’s quilt, but it is cold, hard and heavy—avant-guard, experimental, noisy—

made with steel, bits of pipeline from my maternal great-great grandfather, a Canadian pioneer of the natural gas industry, a bow from his daughter, a violinist, a piano key from my maternal grandmother, a classical pianist, jangling with a typewriter’s key from my paternal grandfather, a machinist …

English Class 101, in Writing Resilience Anthology by MadHat Press

I am tired of the copying and pasting, human disconnection, disrespect, the absence of thought.

Some students now weeks into the course still don’t know my name, course title.

Essays purchased from Course Hero, Grade Fixer.

Extra time of work for investigations, reports of academic violations…

Daffodils, in Spring 2024 Issue of Raven’s Perch

Their nerdy yellow trumpet
usually slighted in the Pacific Coast downpour
by hunched herds of windshield washers,
slanted brows, pursed lips,
now preside in the dry air
in the styles of great artists
with serrated, vibrating mouths…