Monthly Archives: April 2011

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NaPoWriMo Poem #22: Homecoming

Come home.
Wonder if this is really home.
Feel the air cling to and buzz on your skin
as you exit the plane.
Watch neon write poems
with the glare and hiss of brilliant letters like slit veins
on the darkened windshield of the taxi cab
that pulls up to the curb.
Feel your throbbing head scintillate
as the night slowly pours into your eyes and ears. Watch it
compete with the footage of the last three days
as it loops around your brain, pulling you forward
to the inevitability of an angry stage
about to break under your collective weight.
Rehearse what you are going to say
as you assume the stage.
Wonder if you really do
have anything to say at all.
Continue reading →

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NaPoWriMo Poem #20: To Thomas

Another mouth
etched into a man’s
side will speak
for him when
his first mouth cannot, closed and
locked by his spirit’s

exit. He
returned to tell his
tale of how
He slipped through
Death’s fingers: listen through your
fingertips, touching

to feel the
words of the tale, the
cadence of
his living
breath, His opened wound smiling
at your disbelief.

Written 4/27/11
© 2011 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.
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Another poem using the shadorma form for the stanzas, also focusing on Easter. Enjoy.

-Nicole

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NaPoWriMo Poem #19: Holes

Nails bite and
sting, leaving holes where
flesh should be;
life leaks out
in pints of blood. Holes in his
wrists speak of exit

wounds and a
life lost to love. But
this vessel
is filled and
a once dead man walks. Through these
holes, nothing leaks out.

Written 4/27/11
© 2011 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.
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This is the first of a few shadormas that I am writing, as I’ve been intrigued by the form and have been wanting to try it out. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to contain myself to one complete shadorma, so I am using the form to construct my stanzas in these short poems. Enjoy.

-Nicole

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My Poem, “Color (A Modest Plea)” Published at Shift Journal

Greetings! My poem, “Color (A Modest Plea)“, was published today in Shift Journal of Alternatives: Neurodiversity and social change.

As you might surmise from the journal’s title, the journal’s premise is that autism has existed all along and it entertains “the notion of autistic as a legitimate way to be in the world, from the crossroads of theory, society, and personal experience”.

The poem was inspired by a piece by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg of Journeys with Autism which appeared earlier this month in Shift Journal, “An Open Letter to Robert MacNeil Regarding PBS’ Autism Now Series“. I used the same quote by Robert MacNeil from the series to jump-start this poem as one of my NaPoWriMo poems. Please jog over to Shift Journal to read it, and check out the many other contributions in the journal about autism and neurodiversity.

-Nicole

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NaPoWriMo Poem #18: Gardens

I.

A pair of urns, thrown against the belly bark skin of a tree
and busted. The fruit hanging above, pointing down
in double-edged swords, falls like icicles around the collection of shards
lying at the base of the tree. When you eat this fruit,
you walk away with a belly full of knives that
jostle as you walk, points reaching forth and bearing edges
that split open your gut to reveal you
as a naked, muscled skeleton underneath. Who told you
that you were naked?
Continue reading →

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NaPoWriMo Poem #16: Roses and Thorns

To make a crown of thorns,
you must first tear the roses away.
The King is crowned with their stiff, green bodies
withering to brittle, bone, and dust after they
have been seized and stolen from the ground.
Before returning to dust, they stiffened into rigor mortis,
frozen in a circle as they entwine with each other,
thorns jutting out and radiating from an empty center.
Continue reading →

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NaPoWriMo Poem #15: Walking

Nails pin thin, battered feet
to fractured wood. Affixed to earth,
neither He nor the wood can rise up
and walk. He is a nailed up, gasping, bleeding sentinel
watching the sun’s single eye burn:
but Death walks around Him, trailing a mantle of clouds
behind her that will occlude the sun and shut its eyes
to sleep.
Continue reading →

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NaPoWriMo Poem #13: Pretending to Be Normal (Eye Contact)

If you try to look into my eyes
you might succeed, if only for a moment
until I feel your gaze incise
and my skin wires buzz with too much current.
Continue reading →

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NaPoWriMo Poem #12: Wine

Your pomegranate eyes close,
sink under the surface as your lids
close shut to seal them from the outside. The black
on the backs of your eyelids are a screen,
ready for projection. Cut the film,
splice it together from all of those fleeting shots
you’ve captured at school. Multiple frames
of him. The smile, the laugh, the eyes.
Continue reading →