The Paris Review

Two Poems by Kęstutis Navakas

ARCHAEOPTERYX

you’re home. eating lentils. talking to yourloved one. you’re abroad. eating lentils. talking toyour loved one. you’reyou’re talking to your lentils. you’re not a knife, not cotton.talking to your loved one. you forgot how to talkand forgot how to hang in the closet. you forgotthe letter in the receit. you’re talking to cotton.it doesn’t answer. its life was not for you.a lot. too much. although there is never too much.you’re anywhere. eating lentils. talking to.she doesn’t answer. she went everywhere you went.she flew. when you fly—you can’t cry. you’retalking to her. she doesn’t answer. but there weretwo rooms. you didn’t know where. you wentanywhere. no one was drawing your loved one there.just a manuscript in the bottom drawer of the desk.and its feathers are petrified. along with two dozenof its vertebrae. you told your loved one about this.you ate lentils and it didn’t even rain. one hundred fiftymillion years—just the blink of an eye. in yourmanuscript. in the solnhofen schist.

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Cover: Courtesy of Nicolas Party and the Modern Institute /Toby Webster Ltd. Page 12, courtesy of Alice Notley; pages 32, 36, 39, 42, 45, 48, 52, 55, 56, courtesy of Jhumpa Lahiri; page 59, photograph by Marco Delogu, courtesy of Jhumpa Lahiri; pages

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