published in Seul Poetry summer issue August 2017
poem by Veronica Suarez

Lessons of the Night 

Don’t stitch easy to dying:
pin the world as yours to keep.

Listen to the machine of your breathing
while sizzling static parades the brain. 

Blood pumps through string-bean veins
while cicadas shriek their pulsing timbals.

Crawling in the gleam of the click beetle 
as yellow houselights singe the dark.  

Half-deserted moon limbering in the clouds,
travelling near the knitted wings of fireflies. 

Floating in a fevered dream.
Moon: swollen cue ball of magic.

Lessos of the Night

Lessons of the Night

"Breakthrough" is a beautiful poem and one of my favorites from my chapbook, A Romance in Letters, which will be published soon. Please check out my Instagram account where I post poems from my chapbook as well as poems that I write exclusively for Instagram: short and lyric. I will be releasing an audio book of A Romance in Letters soon. Stay tuned and follow me in the meantime. You can also find more poems on my Tumblr account:https://veronicadsuarez.tumblr.com/
https://www.instagram.com/veronicapoet/

Breakthrough


Yesterday swirls like a mass 
whirlwind. Yesterday, my nerves, 
spinning needle veins.  

Today, the sky spreads 
like blue-starched 
linen sheets. 

And wind that blows by 
like pink cotton candy. 

You held my pain 
in your callused palm. 

I rested there 
like a swan. 

Everything bright and glimmering 
near this lake. Clouds transform 
into dragons, giants, and stallions. 

Autumn is near. Near, the way 
I’d like your curls to twirl my skin. 
Near, your hair like barley. 

I bend with the wind 
like the thin, palm leaves. 

I’d bend like the wind
if you kissed me.

Breakthrough - poem

Ravel with My Love

Driving with my love
down Old Cutler Road,
the stars are hidden
by the cove of oak
and banyan trees.

The flute speaks
a soft melody 
while the oboe 
and piano merge 

intimately in Ravel’s 
Piano Concerto in G major, 
the second movement. 

The notes float,
a melancholy flight,
as we drift into the depth 
of the darkness. 

As the music shimmered 
through the speakers, 
I said, “Even though
this thing called life 
can be hard at times,

in the end,
my love,
it’s all worth it.”

Ravel with My Love (first reading)

Ravel with My Love

Driving with my love
down Old Cutler Road,
the stars are hidden
by the cove of oak
and banyan trees.

The flute speaks
a soft melody
while the oboe
and piano merge

intimately in Ravel’s
Piano Concerto in G major,
the second movement.

The notes float,
a melancholy flight,
as we drift into the depth
of the darkness.

As the music shimmered
through the speakers,
I said, “Even though
this thing called life
can be hard at times,

in the end,
my love,
it’s all worth it.”

Ravel with My Love (second reading)

Inspired by the 80s film, The Blue Lagoon, this romantic poem is written from the point-of-view of Victoria Cruz, the protagonist of my chapbook, A Romance in Letters. 

I set out to write a poem that was fun and romantic, and written from a female perspective. I remember watching The Blue Lagoon as a kid, and I liked it very much. Once I wasn't a kid anymore, I realized the film wasn't very feminist, but it's still a very beautiful depiction of nature in its wildest form. The merging of romance and nature is what still draws me to this film, and as I think this film is underrated with its low Rotten Tomatoes rating, I decided to honor it with a poem. This poem is fiction, but my love of this film is real.

Paradise Beach

“Ni la noche, ni el sueño
pudieron separarnos”

- Pablo Neruda


Because you’re never mine,
my darling, I resign
to fantasy. And dream 
of you amidst the sea, 
young and free in Fiji. 

Let’s sail to a paradise beach,
the sky so sleek, it’s like a seal,
the sound of the given sand.

The wind chimes ting
from the tiki hut,
my darling, made of bamboos
and palm leaves. 

We eat the meat of the coconuts, 
drink kava from its shells,
suck the juice of the mangos,
just us two in the Blue Lagoon. 

Collect fish in the tide pools,
cast lines from the dinghy,
deal with wind like hurricanes,
gusto of gales swirling.

Dive atop the rocks, slide
down cascades or waterfalls, 
search for pearls in the pits,
pick hibiscus to pin my hair.

Hide in the shade of the banyan tree,
hear the chatter of the monkeys, 
the hissing palm leaves,
the Fiji Crested Iguana watching. 

In the mornings when I wake, 
I feel the flutter of your eyelids.
My love you breathe through me, 
amidst the tousle of thin sheets. 

Your love echoes through me
in the caves, near the beach,  
amongst the schools of fish, 
swirling like the spirals of galaxies. 

At night, I smell the fragrance 
of the frangipani flowers 
still, like stationary 
pinwheels 
near the hanging bee hives.
Honey, you and me 
defy gravity, the sapphire  
blue of the mesosphere. 

At night, we swim 
with the bioluminescent
plankton, our bodies glowing,  
as the coral reefs wave and 
swell their tentacles 
while we swim naked. 

Because you’re never mine
my darling, I meet you in lines. 
Let’s copulate in poetry 
like two hawksbill turtles
enmeshed, 
mating in the ocean. 

Awake, my bliss, my snake, 
my kundalini serpent.

Please love, let me not
mistake your lips for wings.
Your lips like prayer beads I kiss.

If I could be your alibi in life, 
the fall and rise of night. 

For I, who cannot fly,
darting at the wings,

will swoop
with star velocity.

Paradise Beach

To celebrate the fact that Pablo Neruda's poetry has just entered the public domain, I recorded his love poem, "Night on the Island." Enjoy!

- Veronica Suarez

Night on the Island - Pablo Neruda

Night on the Island by Pablo Neruda

Longing at Six in the Evening

In these days so bleak, so cold, so sweet, I think of you and what could have been. I’m at the lake in the hours of twilight reluctant to let go. I hear the locomotives swirl by. I hear the throbbing calling of a mating cane toad. A duck pecks the grass in the darkness.

In the darkness, I can see my feelings. That I haven’t forgotten you. What is longing? Is it reaching for the link we’ve broken with God when we’re born? Is longing the settling of twilight at six in the evening? A displaced sound in the trees. The guttural trill of the male toad searching for its mate. The lights glistening in the water.

It’s when we can’t see that we feel our heartbeat. We can see the sweet evening, how it’s broken from the morning. And the afternoon: the transition that unites the two. Everything settles. Everything in constant motion. But easy. Nature settles easy into the evening but longs for the light of the sun. Maybe the throb I hear is just the sweet longing for the sun.

It was cloudy today—gray—and now the soothing, low shaking sound. I search in the grass for its whereabouts. The sound increases and depletes. Swells and settles like the evening with the echo of crickets. This sound reminds us that we are alive, and there’s still magic. There’s still magic in all of us.

- Veronica Suarez, A Romance in Letters

longing at six in the evening

Can poets make a living from posting on Instagram? What are the pros and cons of publishing in traditional platforms such as literary presses and magazines? Is it realistic to publish in The New Yorker? Why is the traditional publishing world criticizing Instapoets? Should poets with MFA degrees publish on Instagram?

In this two-hour conversation, I interview Tommy Sheffield about the publishing industry for an in-depth and candid look at why Instapoetry is such a phenomenon in a world where Smartphones are taking over readers' attention. Don't miss this insightful and uncensored probe into the world of publishing.

I'm publishing this on social media of course, so check it out in other platforms below including video clips:

INSTAGRAM
www.instagram.com/veronicapoet/
www.instagram.com/tommy_sheffield/?hl=en

YOUTUBE
https://youtu.be/xsJjvSBnhY8

Veronica's Poetry

Popular tracks