LORENA CAPUTO - POEMS

Lorena Caputo is a documentary poet, translator and travel writer. Her works appear in over 150 journals in Canada, the US, Latin America, Europe, Asia, Australia and Africa; 12 chapbooks of poetry – including Caribbean Nights (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2014), Notes from the Patagonia (dancing girl press, 2017) and the upcoming On Galápagos Shores (dancing girl press, 2019); and 18 anthologies. She has also authored a dozen travel guidebooks. In March 2011, the Parliamentary Poet Laureate of Canada chose her verse as poem of the month. Caputo has done over 200 literary readings, from Alaska to the Patagonia. She travels through Latin America, listening to the voices of the pueblos and Earth. Follow her travels at: www.facebook.com/lorrainecaputo.wanderer.

ON THE RADIO … REPLAY

Past patchy swamplands
    & into Kinchel village
The bus speeds along
        Here Comes the Sun on its radio
    & the sun searing the clouds
        from the two-day-old Northern storm

In one yard, a buzzard stands stoically
    amidst the chickens & turkeys
        pecking along the ground


A puppy stands in the middle of the road
    black       with white-blazed chest       white boots
The bus blows its horn
& the puppy twists in indecision
        step there       step here where to go
    as the bus nears
        & its back wheels bounce

The suddenness of his death
    raises my hands to my face
His fear racks my body

If that would have been a human child
    would the driver have swerved       stopped?


A few hundred meters further
    a white-chested       whited –booted
        puppy stands in the road
The horn-blowing bus swerves
    as it speeds down the worn road


At the side of the road, a white iguana     
    crawls out from the brush
Pumping its front legs, he bobs his collared head
SANTA BÁRBARA BENDITA . . .

​

SANTA BÁRBARA BENDITA . . .
​    —fragmentos

​Last night      all night
    it stormed 
Thunder rumbled      tumbled
    quaking the waters of
        Havana Bay . . . 


This morning only the
    palest puddles remain
        luminescent in this
            growing day



The days drift      endlessly
    into nights      & nights
        into


Another madrugada habanera
    I sit up on a porch
Faintly your voice rolls
    across the waning night
        & down silent streets . . .


≈      ≈ ≈      ≈ ≈ ≈


One santigüeña evening
    I wander through a Caribbean house
In a passageway you stand
                                silent
I lightly touch your
    carmine robe
                    Santa Bárbara bendita
[space]
In a room
            upon a shelf
    Your vessel sits
                        silent
                Qué viva Changó
                    Qué viva Changó
Fearfully      shyfully
    I cast my eyes away
                Qué viva Changó
                    Qué viva Changó
                                        señores . . . . . .


I return to my room
    on the other side of this city
& look out its windows
    shutters thrown open
Below the streets glisten
    in scant lamplights

From the Casa de Trova
    music drifts through
        this now-late night
& through that Sierra
                across tin & tile roofs
    I hear your song
        rumbling      & tumbling

​SOLITARY SHORES

Come the low season
dunes drift around
the boarded-up hotel
& restaurants

A silence of surf rolling
to the taupe shore, scarlet
crabs scuttling, bargelloing
the wet sand
Pelicans & frigatebirds
skim the ocean verdegris,
its waves heaving
deep green

In the debris of
seawash &
seashells crumbling
from petrified cliffs,
those crabs scurry
over       & through
the carcass of a
sea lion

The tide flows in far & shallow,
leaving behind a pale 
green foam wavering
in the breeze
Colonies of whimbrels
peck the moist arena
with their long
curved beaks

Beyond a square rock arch
heaps of ebon striated stone
rise ragged from the
glistening strand,
capturing tidal pools
alive with anemones,
tendrils swaying in the  fill,
the retreat of each wave



​

THE BLIND BUSKER
​

​On this side street
behind the president’s palace
with an occasional bus 
fuming by

he sits playing
a wheezing accordion
off-key singing a pasillo

passers-by divert
to the other side
or divert to him
to drop a coin

in his green plastic bowl
chained to one ankle
against theft

& they move on …

I drop a coin
& stop to listen …

… to listen …

& write this poem

FUGUE 
​

I.
Every day the sapphire skies
    cloud over these
        rough-hewn hills
Every day come late afternoon
    the winds whirl, rattling
        windows & roofs
& almost every day then
    it showers


II.
Last night
    I fell asleep
        beneath a star-strewn sky

Then a gale
    tormented this valley
        awakening me
Thunder crashed
    lightning struck so near
The air full of ozone
    chill drops
        & hail


III.
Again this night
    in deepest depths
The sky pulses white
    & the rain falls


IV.
This other afternoon
    the clouds gather
        leaden
Thunder echoes
    around barren crags

& the wind whispers loud
    I do not understand
It twists the branches
    of molle & willow
        of eucalyptus
& passes through
    the mines

Perhaps to tell me
    of lives lost
        of lives wasted

​