| it’s the way | you blame me |
| your breath | like regret |
| smells like | broken whiskey and overdue bills |
| poor white trash | dropping from the smokestacks |
| that makes me suck in | draw in |
| mine | my belly like an empty church |
| Marlboro wind | full of the God that left us |
| magazine cowboys | that I still look for |
| I know that your arms | angels rescued from Greek tragedies |
| are made of barbed wire | Cassandra’s lips runneth over |
|
so that my fingers |
can give you apologies in unspent paychecks |
| can dance with pencils | burn everything that we’ve crucified |
| and charcoal | but they cannot make the magic |
| you tried to make this our home | that we so desperately need |
| I make mine | out of the imprint of your daddy’s shadow |
| inside sketch paper | and the shed skin of erasers |
| that is made out of mirrors | where his last name should be |
| the creek knows | you consult |
| that polluted goddess full of stink and junk | the Oracle of Steelville |
| she told me | to find |
| that there are steel screams | the crooked remains of a life gone to seed |
| rippling in sine waves | prayers |
| under your skin where | blueprints for our exodus |
| muscle should be | I look in the mirror |
| this is the poison | I see Agamemnon |
| fabulous and modern | as a woman |
| I’m sorry | I still smell the smoke in your hair |
| if you don’t like my mirror – I | build pyramids |
| just reflect | how the sun will never see |
| what’s around me | our escape |
Written 4/14/10
© 2010 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.
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This poem, a cleave, was written for NaPoWriMo #14: You Want Me to Write a What? over at Read Write Poem. Yes, it’s my prompt. I figured it just wouldn’t be right if I didn’t write for it.
This is in the same vein of some small town poems I’ve already written, for example “Litany to a Melancholic” and “The Creek”. The speaker in “The Creek” is a teenaged girl growing up in a “white trash” area of the same town and is raised by a single mother. She has aspirations of being an artist, and is very talented at illustration. She appears again in this poem — she is speaking in the left hand poem, and her mother is speaking in the right hand poem.
I hope you enjoyed this poem (or shall we say, 3-in-1 poem).
-Nicole
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[...] NaPoWriMo Poem #9: Untitled Cleave, 4/14/10 [...]
reading each one separately and then together… weighty words of a life gone by… love can be so very beautiful and then so terribly gone bad trying to recapture… thanks again for sharing the cleave nicole… there was another form you introduced a while back that had three separate poems side by side and then read together now that was incredible do you remember that one and the what the form was called??? small portions cleave
Wow you certainly can write a cleave! You go girl! Again thanks for the prompt.
Pamela
Amazing poem Nicole.
Love how you give the daughter and mother’s point of view and then the third – amazing work Nicole. Thanks for introducing us to the form.