Four Poems by Lorraine Caputo

 

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.