Réka Nyitrai


Crystallization

More sugar than water
heaven's door
will be made of chocolate,
except for the threshold
where snakes shall lurk
waiting to tempt Eve
with apples. 



ENNUI
 
After Anna's suicide
Count Alexei Kirillovich Vronsky
left Tolstoy's novel
and started a new life in Bucharest.
Opened a cafe on Victoriei Boulevard
and fell in love with a Romanian ballerina,
who eventually left him for a poet.
Vrosnky's cafe still exists.
Just yesterday, I admired its cake display.
Craving a chocolate chip cookie, but being on a diet,
I pressed my tongue against the cold glass window,
in that moment feeling seduced and abandoned. 



Arrhythmia

The children's book written by Anna Karenina was found in a wooden trunk in Yasnaya Polyana. For a long time this book was thought not to exist, but now it has been found by a junk dealer. He was looking for shoes made by Tolstoy himself. He didn't find shoes, but he did find a manuscript signed Anna Karenina.The book is dedicated to Anna's daughter, Anyuta. It tells the story of a baby snail who wanted very much to grow up so that it could touch the rainbow with its tentacle-eyes. The manuscript ends abruptly, as the little snail takes its first crawl in the garden.




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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