April: a personal "National Poetry Month" challenge. Poem #1
I am excited to share a personal challenge with all my friends.
During the month of April, I will be posting a new poem or a poem I wrote in the past but never made public, everyday. An update from Kimberly Kohlhaas (thank you!) reminded me that the fourth month of the year is National Poetry Month.
I am posting a photo with each poem. Perhaps in a past life, I used to marry people. In this life I don't, but all my visual and hand-written work has become a "til death do us part" affair. Granos de Café, Natural is the name of this photograph. Coffee in Venezuela is bold, fierce, scarce and passionate. Prisoner of a tiny, agonizing trade, it doesn't travel as much as I would like to see. No passport for these grains. They live in Venezuelan households, their lingering aroma speaking only Spanish, reminding the times and rituals of the day.
Midsummer is a short, abstract poem I wrote for a workshop at The Summer Writing Festival (University of Iowa) back in 2006. This class was lead by the soft-spoken, great poetry reader, and award-winning poet Professor Michael Dennis Browne.
Midsummer
Poem by Valentina Vitols
I can be a second
a fleeting one
amid thousands
of them
many are unknown;
like the inhabitants of the unconscious
who
assemble in legions
clamber dreams
rustle, rustle
humming
inciting what to yearn
Above what I lived
I become dawn
midsummer has ended
in the story I cannot wear
(c) Valentina Vitols, 2006. Do not reproduce without author's permission. And please, bare with me: English is my second language!
