This week’s Read Write Poem Prompt suggested that we pick a vowel sound and use it through out the poem, but this week, my Muse decided he wanted to play around with alliteration and assonance instead — so I listened, and the result is this poem.

Also, I’ve been reading Galway Kinnell’s The Book of Nightmares and have been inspired to use nightmares as a theme this week — this is my third poem about nightmares. I hope you enjoy the read.

-Nicole

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Many nights I have spent, my back bent and busted
from hoof prints imprinting themselves, galloping
out of the gold-edged leaves of Bible paper. I
started life

as an exclamation point,

but in the dark, I curl
into a fetal comma,
unable to suspend their apocalyptic sentences
long enough to sleep – or I become a
question mark, adumbrating my tomorrow
eyes rolled skyward to
scan and pan for the presence of
black helicopters. You know the kind:

mosquito-faced, nameless whirlybirds
swirling wind with their wings
and promising prison bars
and beast-marked hands
with their breaths. Beneath their buzz,
I strain to hear
the pre-death ghost boots of troops
slapping the asphalt
in a synchronized Morse Code goosestep applause.

Even my sleep is not sacred: some nights
in this Jungian pit
a row of nuclear cotton flowers bloom, opening
white cloud faces in quick succession –

flash, flash, flash –

and my atomic bones weep skin
in an acid inferno. Now
I’ve been told

that God will separate the sheep from the goats –
but some days,
I silently pass a palm over my hair
and feel for horns, then curve down
to my chin
to check for a beard.

Written 8/11/09
© 2009 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.

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