Weekly Feature: Poetry at The Arts Fuse
Welcome to “Poetry at The Arts Fuse.” A new poem every Thursday
THE FOURTH COTTAGE
“Without clothing, covered only in mud and the blood of herself and others [Ita Siraż, a young woman of nineteen] sought help. She visited one cottage and was turned away, and then a second, and then a third. In the fourth cottage she found help, and she survived.
“Who lives in the fourth cottage?”
p. 298, Black Earth, Timothy Snyder
This reads like a folk tale,
but in a folk tale there are three
only, and an old woman
with magical powers
who fosters the forlorn maiden
and fends off wicked oppressors
until she marries a prince.
From her Lithuanian ditch
she rose to the surface. This reads
like a ghost story, but in a ghost story
the undead returns
to terrorize the neighborhood
until woodcutters in the cottages
drive a stake through her heart.
This reads like a folk tale
or a ghost story, except
for that fourth cottage at the end
of the village. And so, dear reader,
This is a blessing and a prayer.
May you always make your home
in the fourth cottage.
J. Kates, a minor poet and a literary translator, has been granted three National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships and an Individual Artist Fellowship from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts. He has published three chapbooks of his own poems and two full books, The Briar Patch (Hobblebush Books) and Places of Permanent Shade (Accents). The translator of a dozen books of Russian and French poetry, he has edited two anthologies of Russian translations. A former president of the American Literary Translators Association, and a co-diretor of Zephyr Press, he is also the co-translator of seven books of Latin American and Spanish poetry.
Note: Hey poets! We seek submissions of excellent poetry from across the length and breadth of contemporary poetics. See submission guidelines here. The arbiter of the feature is the magazine’s poetry editor, John Mulrooney.
— Arts Fuse editor Bill Marx
