Poet Special: Works by Helen Vitoria (June 2012 / 12.11)

Poet Special: Works by Helen Vitoria (June 2012 / 12.11)

Helen Vitoria

Poema para Pablo Neruda

                Santiago, Chile – 1973

in the courtyard
the moon melts the magnolia
cobblestones bleed        desesperado
amarillo   love

above a crowd
infinite              cantos de los pájaros

stars shatter
still−
one
      falls             silent

~

October, Again

we were champions, crying false aches
on glitter filled sidewalks of wet leaves

they’re playing our song, can you hear it?

I saw steeples, a lit bridge
beneath it rooftops of Spanish clay

I am sorrow smeared in God’s
fattened moon, the architecture of war

what a sad muscle the mouth becomes
when a feast is starting
and knives fall onto the body

I held nothing back−

other than to say, other than to tell you
I felt, the cold gardenia of morning
rising from your bones

~

Five Pears

The pears are dying. A momentum of green resolved. It’s no
accident that someone has carved an owl in the trunk of one. It’s
no accident that when my brother died my mother sat under
them in static for years. It rained through an entire summer of
sleep and conversation. Sometimes a pillar of boats would lift
its head to us and take a picture of bedrock. A dense silver rot
half filled with wind and song, a sudden shimmer. Beneath, the
dead continued to sleep, while horses grazed towards the ocean.

~

Rossignol

all night, relentless song−

a maddening rush
his little lamenting piercing number

that reminds me
I am still alive

soon there will be a loud
whistling crescendo

along with an impressive trill
filled with native woodnotes

some final masterpiece
of solitude

~

Saudade

now, what remains is a disjointed bed
a harvest elegy to fill the space of conversation
in fields the bruises thaw and the raw cicada
grey from summer commits its skin to litany
−defies the man in walls, the man that came from snow
his heart, the core sound I still hear
when I press my ear to the water

           Author’s note: saudade : Pronunciation:/saʊˈdɑːdə/
           (Portuguese) a feeling of longing, melancholy, or nostalgia, a deep emotional state

* * *

Author’s commentary: I have always been fascinated with the human condition and interpersonal relationships. I write about the things which affect me, which affect all of us. Most times, I find that contemporary poetry touches or skims the surface but does not deeply enter the human condition. The poetry that appeals to me personally is that which takes risks and reaches deeper into those things that make us tick.

Helen Vitoria is a poet and photographer living in Pennsylvania. Her poems and photographs appear widely online and in print: elimae, PANK, The Awl, FRIGG Magazine, Rougarou, Dark Sky Magazine, and others. She is the author of six poetry chapbooks and a full length poetry collection: Corn Exchange (Scrambler, 2012). She has a poetry pamphlet forthcoming (Greying Ghost Press, 2012). Her poems have been nominated for Best New Poets & the Pushcart Prize. She is the Founding Editor & Editor in Chief of THRUSH Poetry Journal, THRUSH Press, and Van Gogh’s Ear. Find her here.