The Fathers
Bird of prey. Absence, burning. Landscape with no rivers. Sunset stolen from my mother. // Red moon. Red snow. Red loneliness. A purse full of paper money. // A white granular fluid you either love or hate. A hatched pigeon egg. An eager pencil. My most faithful plagiarist. // A grave, that in five years, I have never once visited.
The Mothers
Heart filled with rainwater. Presence, towering. Landscape with rivers. // Dirty window. Pills. Rotten meat. // A rasping mouthpart that pierces the epidermis of the mirror causing angels to appear yellow or bronze. // A muted cry for help.
Réka Nyitrai is a spell, a sparrow, a lioness's tongue — a bird nest in a pool of dusk. A Romanian-Hungarian poet, she learned English (her primary language of writing) later in life, moving fluently between prose poems, haiku, and free verse, often channeling the feminist surrealist currents of Leonora Carrington, Aase Berg, and Aglaja Veteranyi. In 2020, she released a bilingual (Spanish and English) collection of haiku known as While Dreaming Your Dreams (Mano Ya Mano Books) which received a Touchstone Distinguished Books Award. She then released her debut full-length poetry collection, Moon Flogged, in 2024 through Broken Sleep Books, and recently released a chapbook through Ethel Zine called With a Swan's Nest on Her Back. Her second full-lenght poetry collection Split / Game of Little Deaths will be out with Piżama Press in May 2026.
