Réka Nyitrai


Yellow tulip

Yesterday I saw a woman crying. As she walked she shed tears. Her tears were yellow. Slowly, as she sobbed, 
her face became a spent tulip.



Poem told to me by Dora Maar

This is the poem
Dora Maar told me
when we met—
Though, I like to laugh,
to pose
and play the role of the bright
and bubbly
at night, when I am alone
the corners of my mouth
turn down.
Craving to be touched
I allow sadness—that old, cozy shawl—
to wrap about me.                                  
Though, I have told no one,
in every self-portrait of mine
in the bottom left corner of each canvas
there is an invisible vase.  
There, in the hollow of that vase
I keep my little deaths—
poems, not yet unwritten.



Spurges

Her smile turned his poems into a grasshopper, a leap of faith his heart unceasingly hunted. This is the story 
of the blonde locks I found between the pages of my grandfather’s yellowing manuscript.

Réka Nyitrai is a spell, a sparrow, a lioness's tongue — a bird nest in a pool of dusk. She is the recipient of a Touchstone Distinguished Books Award for 2020 for her debut haiku volume While Dreaming Your Dreams (Valencia Spain: Mono Ya Mono Books, 2020).

 
 

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