Réka Nyitrai Surreal-Absurd Sampler
“The surreal has always played a pivotal role in my writing, essentially as a tool / strategy for dealing with suppressed emotions; uninviting reality, and unfulfilled dreams and desires. My poems afford an opportunity to disrupt the everyday with the unusual. They provide mystifying solutions to barely perceived questions - through my work I tap into something ‘other’, something almost paranormal. As a child I longed to be either witch or bird: poetry affords an alternative landscape for all those unlived selves. From the inception of my poetic journey, surreal (sometimes absurdist) images have been the mainstay of my signature surrealist style. This early haiku (originally published in Otata Issue 36, 2018) serves as an example —
an octopus
in her father’s lungs . . .
first autumn rain”
— Réka Nyitrai
~~~
TUMULUS
(after Leonora Carrington’s ‘Green Tea’, 1942)
In a second, he tears her womb apart with his teeth. Then, he tries to push back into her the thing that is crying and kicking. It’s not my son. It’s the hyena’s — shouts the horse-faced man, while he shoves and thrusts at the howling flesh-ball. When the Oval Lady awakes she finds her belly covered with earth and stones.
TUNED
My brother’s ears are possessed by Pan’s flute. At night creatures like feathered milk ooze from his nose and mouth: some prayers, others curses. Culled from his dreams this is how he loves his wife. After many attempts, his wife bears him a fawn. They call it Five-legged Lotus.
AVALANCHE
For some unknown reason the moon invites me to a dinner party. When I arrive, I find all the other guests sleeping. Repeatedly, I try to wake them, but all are unresponsive. Later, a woman - who might be the moon - plunges a fork into my cold back. Although I have no sensation of pain I still want to cry out. At that very moment I realize that I am frozen. Under the ice that covers my entire body, I feel horror welling up, until it becomes an avalanche.
SELF-PORTRAIT AS MARRIAGE BED
I am a marriage bed sewn into the skin of a sacrificed horse. I am a widow who, inside her late husband’s heart, found an empty suitcase filled with his sweetheart’s bathing suits. I am a dewdrop rolling from a leaf. I am a band of light pooling on God’s shaved scalp.
MAGPIE-WOMAN
I’m done. I boil clouds and drink them lukewarm mixed with the juice of a single red tulip. One cup for sorrow, but seven for a secret never to be told. When the great flood came, I was the only bird that didn’t enter Noah’s ark. I preferred to perch on the edge of a cloud and gossip with the thunder and lightning. If you tell me the name of your husband, I will tell you if he loves you. No matter what the outcome is, tomorrow you will find three drops of devil’s blood on his pillow.
LANDSCAPE WITH NO HAT
I leave the house without an umbrella
and notice that it’s raining. I grab a pigeon
and start wearing it as a hat. A man sheltered
under the shop’s eaves compliments my look.
Let’s paint a picture of your hat – he says
and we do. But in the painting, there is no hat or pigeon,
only a nude woman giving birth to the moon.
~~~
TUNED was previously published by Obliterat & SELF-PORTRAIT AS MARRIAGE BED was previously published by Expat Press.
~~~
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).
