TE15 Lithuanian Honey Cake

Gytis Norvilas

my grandfather’s portrait for the gravestone sculptor

based on his arrest sheet, photographs height – a strapping 171-180 cm sawed-off wormwood bragged to a neighbor – he tied the hands of a ComYouth in the summer of ’41 – having only a Russian vintovka rifle with one verdigris shell shoulders and arms – lowered well-sweeps neck – a short flue – he smoked only seaweed hair – reddish frozen ryegrass eyes – blue Karsk sea herring backs July, 1944 – injured by shrapnel in the shoulder blade – tendons torn – on which red bats always tried to perch in pairs to mate face – an oval shaped glazed cracked bottom bowl eyebrows – straight floes of clouds nose – small and thin (hammer metal til it’s hammered, he would say) May, 1946 – arrested in the Panevėžys market – by the meat and fish counter – didn’t know why – like he didn’t know why forged an anvil from an aviation bomb – on which he would hammer hot women

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