IGUANA DREAMS
Beneath a clearing
night sky, black velvet smudged with
quick clouds, speckled stars
I fall asleep
To
dream
of
sleeping on a floor,
another
woman & I
&
a marine iguana
Thankfully
you aren’t
an
alligator
I say
I
promise
not to
eat you
he replies
&
we sleep …
Only to arise,
I did, before the dawn &
to this day’s showers
ASTRAY
The voice of Pillallau
echoes down these rainy streets,
my feline nahual
slinks through this jaguar valley.
But I am lost, trudging through
the bramble of words
abandoned … I do not stop
to Listen, to See.
ARICA
The other night I dreamt
of walking through your
night streets where many
times I walked before
Places no longer looked
quite as familiar, not the
shops, not the markets
where I would stop to buy
& chat with this doña &
that señor … darkness …
& silence …
& this eve, an earthquake
rattled the windows of the
inn I often stayed in, silence
reigning cyberspace of how
you are … a city swiped not
once but twice in the past by
quake & the rising tides after
wards sweeping the fortress
& churches, the streets clean
of adobe & caña homes …
& this night … I pray the
ruins not be deep, that the
tide does not rise on this
near-new moon night …
& that the doñas & the
señores of the shops, the
markets be safe ….
GHOSTS
I am chasing
the ghosts
of my past.
I’m running away
from them.
I want to confront you,
grab your wasted,
bloated arms,
force you
to look into my eyes.
I want to confront
your myth,
your reality.
The madness
I fear grows within.
I run from you
screaming
denying your existence,
whether in some reality
or only in my mind.
I want to flee
from you
& yet
I find my Self
confronted,
surrounded by you.
I’m chasing the ghosts
of my past.
I’m fleeing
from them ….
Lorraine Caputo is a wandering troubadour – and a documentary poet, translator and travel writer. Her works appear in
over 200 journals on six continents, such as Prairie Schooner
(US), Revista Máquina Combinatoria (Ecuador), übergang (Germany),
Open Road Review (India), Cordite Poetry Review (Australia) and Bakwa
(Cameroon); and 14 chapbooks – including Caribbean Nights (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2014), Notes
from the Patagonia (dancing girl press, 2017) and On Galápagos Shores
(dancing girl press, 2019). She also pens travel pieces, with
narratives appearing in the anthologies Drive: Women's True Stories from
the Open Road (Seal Press, 2002) and Far Flung and Foreign
(Lowestoft Chronicle Press, 2012), and travel articles and guidebooks. In 2011, the Parliamentary Poet Laureate of
Canada honored her verse. Caputo has done literary readings from Alaska to the
Patagonia. She journeys through Latin America with her faithful knapsack Rocinante,
listening to the voices of the pueblos and Earth. Follow her adventures
at www.facebook.com/lorrainecaputo.wanderer
or http://latinamericawanderer.wordpress.com.
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