Split

We am Hans–Unica–Francesca–Réka. We am the sick rose born and reborn during the winter of 1902, 1916, 1958, 1977. We am placed and replaced in an empty vase forgotten on the head doctor’s nightstand during the winter of 1970, 1975, 1981, 2066. We am writing to you to warn you of the invisible worm preying on the afternoon’s moon. We am withering, but at the same time blooming for the simple reason that, when the world ends, what will remain is the fruit of this dream. We am patient nr.47 at the Eftimie Diamandescu Psychiatric Hospital in Bălăceanca, Romania, a village outside of Bucharest.

//

Chorus

[How dare you have intercourse with ghosts in a bathtub that you dreamt was a lake full of sharks made of marmalade?]

Unica: Out of the window this longing is greater than eternity.

Francesca: Yet another leaden sky inside a self-portrait.

Hans: It must be time for birthing, therefore, the dolls and I will push.

Réka: Again, age drips from the stem of my face.

[In being sure of love, be sure to put fresh flowers in the mane of the galloping sunset.]

Francesca: Without doubt, polka dots remind me of summertime.

//

Réka Nyitrai
[July 03, 2023]

I read poems by Ann Pedone until my eyes hurt. I wake up tired, with red eyes. To get moving I drink two cups of coffee. Still I am tired. On the way to work I keep humming yellow winter, yellow winter until I numb my lips. I want this phrase to become the title of my next collection. Before I go to bed I write a reply to the man who says he wants to divorce his wife by 2025 and marry me. In the last three days I have read the last paragraph of his email at least 100 times: I’m dreaming a lot of you and me together it’s a very powerful thought to imagine giving you constant affection and devotion. So that you can be in total control and use me anytime for anything you wish. I can recite these lines by heart.

//

Francesca Woodman
[September 11, 1980]

What I look like – white, faceless, with feathers – is an accident. My mother and father built a fire and put the water to boil. When the water began to bubble my mother gave birth to me – a dense cloud of smoke. I recognize myself as having a solid shape only when I photograph myself. Otherwise, I am invisible. People pass by me and don’t notice me. Sometimes, I pinch myself to make sure I exist. I tend to think I was born a ghost.

//

Hans Bellmer
[October 05, 1935]

Whenever I dream of my father, the following day I feel unwell. On such days, all I can do is lie in bed and think of hell. In hell, my father and I are women. We are bound together. We want to untie ourselves, but we can’t. Dad wants to wipe the lipstick off my lips, but he can’t. We are bound like this until we merge and become four legs dressed in white socks and black patent leather shoes.

//

Unica Zürn
[May 01, 1951]

I remember that, as a child, I spent hours drawing little girls. They were all weird. Instead of heads, they each had a house glued to their neck. Instead of legs, they had tree trunks. A will, separate of mine, wanted to draw them rooted to the spot. Ever since I have known that the female body is predestined to be a home for the male body and children. Without my children I feel like a house trampled and emptied by thieves. On the day I lost custody of my children I died for the first time. Since then, I have died on several more occasions. The first time is the hardest, after that you get used to it.

//

Chorus

[Everyone, please put your matches back into your different boxes of open, raining sisterhood.]

Hans: Sure I’m the extension of my mother’s blonde loneliness.

Réka: When I curl up like a fetus and cry, I hear the ghosts swaying and rustling.

Unica: My wish list is forever buried in the leaves.

Francesca: I also wanted to be the shoe of the wind.

[Infinity is before us, however, in order to appear bright, it has to be heavily processed.]

Hans: If my dolls seem lost, then a rope is a mirrored window made from the gills of blue-finned birds.

//

Split / Game of Little Deaths is available now from Piżama Press. You can order a copy here.

---

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 collection, Split / Game of Little Deaths, will be her sophomore full-length release.