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Best Poems Written by Victoria Hunter

Below are the all-time best Victoria Hunter poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Victoria Hunter Poem

Where the Woods Open

There's a path I always take
down to the river where the woods
are dressed down open
The light of the sky
doesn't shine in your eyes
but leads the way to redemption
 
I like to stand there for a moment
on the shortcut created by troubled feet
woven with wilderness bliss
and cigarettes butts
It's a path that never sleeps
 
I see the same semi-blind vision
of the river every time
I hear baby boat horns blaring in the distance
and floating out of view
I walk to the rhythm of the trees
the faint sound of Wild Thing
playing in the car
I carry a bent black rod
with a tangled neon line
and a mud-covered box of rusty hooks
and flaming red bobbers
I wear my T-Shirt that says Iron City Beer
that's cut off at the belly
or sometimes my other one
that says Just Do It
with shredded denim shorts
that ride my buttocks
 
After a few seconds of inhaling
and exhaling an indecision
I do what most fishermen do
with only my thoughts to keep me company
I find a clean rock
and cast with desperation
The woods close

Details | Victoria Hunter Poem

The Woman You Never Tell, Anyone You Know

is a dusty rippled salt shaker,
an old working girl
found busy or on a stroll,
in a brothel house
my grandmother said
was often around,
when people sold
what they could to survive.

See her in the morning,
and her body
is an empty bottle
of sweet red wine,
bought cheap,
kept to deny the rough time.

You say now,
she was once round
and smooth as a glass egg
with a rose,
blooming in her breast.

This woman you knew
carried in her purse
a working poet
and a bronze genie lamp,
in case the days moved slow.

This woman you knew,
displayed a blue-purple dragon
she couldn’t let go
you knew, once were her husbands,
when his father died in his presence,
and while he loved drugs.

This woman you remember
you called a treasure
a face, a rainbow, a toy necklace.

This woman you sensed,
reached for you, during moments
when rainfall increased
sparrows flew by, and her home
a sand-feathered dream catcher.
Now nobody cares to admire anymore.

Details | Victoria Hunter Poem

Years After, I Have Buried You

I tasted leaves
the season of aged skin
Below me was the ground
gray in pieces
 
At George Akens
I saw us sittin
in a dull orange booth
sippin long cool drinks
and eatin chicken
down to the bone
and talkin about the springs
when we went fishin
in the close past
we could only partly see
us and the thing
we were to leave with
in our dusty boxes
 
I clung to the memory
as we have a parent
when we were young
and afraid to let go
and be brave
 
Around me were people
blurred as ghosts
those at your grave
I saw through the rain

Details | Victoria Hunter Poem

The Forgotten Room

misty-gray season jars
foul flowery wallpaper  sandy blinds
and a collection 
of ashy brass  and silver

expect to be thankful  
to still have much of the figure  you've had 
since you first believed  you could love 
every season  the same

child  I think it was formed
cause someone was deeply attached
to their absolute love  for their obsession

perhaps a serious writer

and yes I found
a few pots and pans  in it
but only those  a beast
that's only lived in a wild shelter  would accept
their meal served in  during the day

and yes  it also has a window
the size of the wood-burning space
of a chimney
but it’s a window with a view
that doesn’t let you have a second  to forget
there’s such a thing
as time being only mean  to things
that may not be able
to be the way it was  before

Details | Victoria Hunter Poem

2 Am On a Saturday

Your bottle
of Wild Irish
Rose wine
is a potbelly pig
bleeding in the tender
over-turned dirt

gnats linger near it
like kids do a birthday cake
when it’s about to be cut

I am under a blanket
thick as the snow that was on the steps
left from the blizzard of 1993

I keep light on a page of my diary
I sketch my dirty secrets in it

the ones no rose I will ever grasp
will ever know
and don’t ever think
you can make me tell you them

now you sit on a landing
a puppet
when it’s not danced
by magic

and that maybe have been left
to be just another piece
of my home to study
and to one morning

before my blood reminds me
it also has pain
that won’t go away

be chosen
to be another thing
I am obsessed with
revealing in a poem

Details | Victoria Hunter Poem

The Last Time, I Had To See You

You sat them on an icy oak table–
the package of my father’s ashes–
like an old-fashioned box cake.

Your dusty, branch-colored fingers
gripped a pile of pearly white paper sheets
with the profiles of people you were to keep
until their relatives were ready
to let God keep them or send them
to the next place they should be.

Then I swore I could see my father’s ashes
throbbing through the box.
I thought he preferred
to be with drunks than with me.
I never got one call from him on a holiday.
I never got to know the strength
of his heart’s soul in a close embrace.

Why should I care about his ashes?

I remember the room space, an opened box
in the evening in a basement.
I remember I sat, stiff as new chopsticks.
My heart was cake, sunken in the center.
My eyes were acorns in a puddle.
Suddenly you said, “You can come back
for them another time if you like,”
and then drew on one of the sheets
the cost for holding remains of
a poor black man you do not know.

Details | Victoria Hunter Poem

A Note To the Rose, That Won'T Return

Didn't I love you  from one end  to another
exactly how  you were created
so wild and wanting  all the attention  all the time

And weren't we together  constantly
moving in sync  all the time
and can you remember  how I tried to control you
hushed the cry  of your rusty chain links
and bent you forward   and down in half
to see how far  you can leave me  without breaking

Oh love  I want to wake up  inside you again
and put my dreams  in you again
I want to fly again with you  into tomorrow
I want to find you  in the early morning  cold
and tangled around yourself
I want to climb inside your soul  and wipe away
the puddle of cold rain  in your heart

Details | Victoria Hunter Poem

All I Ask

is for my identity  to be returned
for it to be tossed out a window
and for it to land  into my warm lap
so he can be driven away  and away
but he acts as if I asked  
for a bowl of his blood

This is a man who taught me
words kill women slowly
they consume their spirits
and they don't know  it's happening

I remember I made love  to this man
before my body did  
and maybe you have to
I followed him to a nightmare
where dirt sticks to you
no matter how long  you brush it off

Through to the end of it  
he said was not into me
in the beginning  my beauty
was in a black mask
now it's a hostage

Details | Victoria Hunter Poem

An Unforgettable Morning

An Unforgettable Morning

I stepped out of my boyfriend’s car,
and was hit, again and again
until half of me got pinned,
between the car
and the edge of the frame, of the door.
I was being crushed
and the pain in my right leg
made me scream, “Help me, God!”

Next, I saw a blurred white man
in my face say, 
“I am going to give you oxygen
before I remove it.”

Then, I had short shallow breaths
like breathing after drowning,
and the pain pushed like air through me
for the first time, inside of me,
in such a rush,  the sea in a cave, in a storm
exploding against, stone walls.

Later I had to think
of how to move without shaking,
like a new recovering drunk,
or a person with a gun to their back,
and without holding onto my boyfriend
a cane, or a strong railing,
then I had to work harder, like this.
Later I thought about the elderly women
who stared at me and said,
“I use to look like that.”

Now they just look past me
like I am one of them.

Later I had a mixer of medicines
rushing inside of me, so strong
like the first wave of the sea,
making it difficult to speak, straight
like my mother, when she disciplined me, again.

Then, I learned,  
the strength of the spirit can be tested
in any season of your life, 
like the mind, body, home, or a relationship,
with a strong persistent force,
when you are not thinking about it.

I learned then, 
you must be ready to move on.

Details | Victoria Hunter Poem

The Gift

Candy-stripe wallpaper
bloody red carpet
My cat put one paw in
and backed out

Never try to settle a fight  in there

Honey  I think the room was made
after someone worked too hard
to get the kink  out of their hair
without pulling  some of it out

Of course  it has a mirror
but little enough to belong
to a child's play vanity

But honey  there is no damn handle
to hold the unused toilet paper

Were they too poor  to not have that either?

Sorry honey  I can't say anything
really nice about it
twice again today  I reached for its handle
and it wasn't there

Just before I called you  I thought
I could make one  with a co-hanger
I promised to keep the instructions  to myself
and to try  not to think it  loudly
just in case the Illuminati  really exist