Basket of Braids by Natalia Litvinova explores the Argentine-Belorussian poet's rural Slavic ancestry, presenting the ideas of historical memory across cultures, female relationships, labor, and the power of tradition and belief. Litvinova, born just months after Chernobyl, looks back at the impact of WWII on her grandparents' community. Basket of Braids is about the aftermath of a war that left a small community devastated and impacted its imagination and psyche for generations to come, while spurring solidarity among the women in the family.
One day I couldn’t
get out of bed.
That morning
a strange lime rained
over the river.
They covered the mirrors
and turned the portraits around.
In a boat they brought me to see
the healer.
It’s the evil eye,
go home
cut open your pillow and burn
what you find there.
I found hair,
eggshells, and scraps
of my face in a photograph.
I spread the ashes
at the crossroads.
The four winds
spread my curse
over the village.
When I can’t sleep
I listen under my pillow
to the blood of my mother
and my grandmother.
In the morning,
everything’s made new,
the walls grow
and the roof unfolds.
The dust from the fields
makes it hard for me to breathe.
I walk wrapped in blankets
pressing my cursed pillow
against my belly.
The women in my family
keep the hair
they cut off
in a basket of braids.
It’s an ancient tradition,
no one can remember
who started it.
Locks, curls,
loose hair,
coppery, blonde,
or ashen.
I fear the magpies
will steal them
or a witch
will come upon them.
If she comes,
do not open the door for her.
And if you open it,
do not let her in.
And if you let her in,
give her neither salt nor bread.
She’ll turn everything
you’ve touched
into her own element,
Grandmother warns.
In the house, the tablecloths
and the curtains
pecked by light.
My curse was there.
Dust from the fields on the floor
and the poppies downcast.
The horse whinnies
rearing on his hind legs.
I ask Mama
why they blew out the candles
and turned the mirrors around.
She answers
that according to tradition
we do this
to keep from bothering
the dead.
Grandmother tries
to stick her thread
through the needle.
A layer
of old skin
protects her.
She doesn’t bleed
when she pricks herself.
At night the sky
is a pit
where unthreaded
needles
shine.
The village
forces my mother
to marry.
They braid flowers
into her hair,
mallow and plantain,
dress her in tulle
and lace.
She looks
out the window, frozen
as if posing for someone.
They adjust her ribbons,
tighten her corset,
bear her barefoot
to the damp fields
so the rainwater
soaks her dress.
The petals fall
from her crown,
mud and grass
between her toes.
We walk
sweeping the ground
with lavender sprigs
so no animal
follows her footsteps
and her betrothed
cannot
find her.
Every day
I pick dozens
of bees
from my horse’s flanks:
they pierced his coat
with their stingers
and died.
None of them
told the hive
that the beauty
of my amulet
is mortal.