that the front door to that old brick-shouldered
house in which I grew up is wide open. Mother
stands on the porch, wearing that same
chiffon dress, its white now faded into a yellow-gray
dingy whimper, and those same elbow gloves,
their fingertip mouths agape with the shock of wear
and age. Her anemic, gray-streaked hair can no longer
handle the victory rolls, so she has settled for
disheveled hair that reaches out frayed ends
bent into coils and crooks like gnarled, hungry knuckles
in every direction. Helen! Helen, where your father
at? she shouts, her paper voice ripped and curled at
every edge, forgetting that Father has been dead
for twelve years.

I don’t bother to explain to her about the
chunks of time that have slipped out of her ears,
or the man who slipped through her fingers like
slick dollars swimming downstream, or the messages
I have been given to bear upon my shoulders and
tongue: she doesn’t seem to listen too well these days,
anyway. I turn to the young man, still sitting silently on the
park bench – and a blurred photo of him from
two years ago comes into full focus with clean,
crystal edges. I say: You’re Paula Williams’ son,
aren’t you? I do know you, after all. Still, I’m sorry
to bother you, young man. He looks at Mother,
who still stands on the porch, looking through him as if
he were a transparent shadow. I almost walk away, but
he looks back at me and then stands up. I stop and turn
to listen. Yes, Ma’am, you’re right. My name is Nick. I
remember you – you work with my mother at the
hospital. I glance once more towards Mother,

who has begun to waltz on the porch with
another ghost – perhaps another young man who used
to compete with Father for this gilded, marzipan prize. I
turn to Nick, who glances at the spectacle for a moment
before replying. It’s okay – you didn’t bother me, he
says. I believe you. And my friend Rachel thinks that
the creek is polluted, too. He looks down at his watch,
and then looks back up at me. She would probably be home
right now. Do you want to go to her place? She lives
in the trailer park at Carmody and Route 4. Maybe
between the three of us, we figure out how to tell everybody
about the creek. I turn and look, just in time to see a
Green Line bus pass Fifteenth Avenue as it ambles down
South Main. We run towards it, hearing its wheels screech
to a halt as it stops at the bus stop on front of the park.

Written 6/14/13 and 6/18/13
© 2013 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.
——————————————
This poem is for We Write Poem Prompt #161: Recursion — a remembrance of things past. The prompt encourages us to visit the self, the identity of our protagonist, through repetition, early memories, and “a seminal relationship of your protagonist”.

-Nicole
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I lend you my children. How do you divine the existence
of their wings? You cannot, unless you put your ear to the air
and listen for caterpillar song. Some do sing, as you mortals
know of song. Some sing in the clicking of keys, the
scratching of pen against clean virgin paper, and the
replay of verse upon verse channeled from needle upon
stylus from grooves somewhere in the gray matter
behind their eyes. Some sing, without moving their
lips: all you have to do is try to listen.

I lend you my children. Tell me, what is the essence of
voice? Speech is not the only means through which
the soul is channeled, and silence does not equal a
vacancy of the heart. Speech can be the beating of wings:
and I weep, because one of my children is dead. We will
never know what kind of wings he possessed: but oh my,
how he could have – would have – flown!

I lend you my children: yet some of you would gladly
pick up knives and plunge them into their chests like an
insane Abraham before a maniacal, bloodthirsty
god. Although some of your Isaacs cannot speak, I will not
believe that you cannot understand the quivering of a heart
and the shuddering of unknown, unformed wings! Shall
the absence of speech give you permission to send my little ones
on a premature journey flying into the land behind the sun
on a pair of bloodied wings? No. Now listen to me:

I lend you my children. I hand them to you,
each resting inside the open palm of one of my
outstretched hands. Somehow, they must transmute
from caterpillars into beautiful, winged creatures
and I trust you are the men and women for the
task. Yet some of you give up when they do not –
or cannot – speak. You lament only for your own sakes
when they come to you with tiny fractures or large chasms
in their skins. You wear Pharisee-colored sackcloth and ashes
on your spirits when their little bodies and minds do not
have the capacity to wear your own selfish wishes.

I lend you my children: and now, one of them lies
dead. I watch a million-strong army of souls like him
lighting candles and chanting prayers to lift him up into
the sky. They keen, they wail, and they rend their
garments like broken ashes that scream kaddish inside
every carbon molecule. Nothing will satisfy them –
none of your explanations, excuses, or apologies. And
I will not be satisfied, either. I will weep in Ramah
until he returns home – and once he does, I will
hold him. I will listen for his voice. I will mend
his wings. And I will sing to him the lullaby
that you never bothered to give him.

Written 6/17/13
© 2013 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.
———————-
“…A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, and bitter weeping; Rahel weeping for her children refused to be comforted for her children, because they were not.” — Jeremiah 31:15

-Nicole
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traverse the blue above her head for a few more seconds,
and then turns to the young man and asks: so what
does this all mean? The young man chuckles, his
laughter like water tumbling over stones in a creek bed,
and he replies: you are almost Crow. But unlike
them, you do not caw nearly enough – and
sometimes, you do not even squawk at all. Helen
tilts her head, an unasked question written in the code
of her raised eyebrows. He replies: I wanted you
to see how your brothers and sisters live, and how
they sing. And you must sing, too, of the river
in your time. Helen opens her mouth to ask him

another question, but he, along with the wigwams,
the crackled cornfield, the women, and the old man
dissolve away. Helen blinks to adjust her eyes, and then
looks up at the giant grandfather of a pine tree standing
behind her and lending his shade. She is across
the river, on the east side of South Main Street, standing
in Washington Park where her old high school once
was. She spins around and faces north: the house
she grew up in sits as a square brick soul right across
the street from the park. Children chase each other,
launch themselves from the park swings and fly in
wild and mad trajectories, and careen fearlessly down the
large metal slide. She walks towards them: none pay attention

except one lithe brown teenage boy crowned
with long black curved spikes for hair. He looks up
as she approaches: she stops in front of him and
inhales, trying to make the quivering in her stomach
melt away. Young man, my name is Aanteekwa. I don’t
know you, and I’m sorry to bother you, but I don’t know
who else to tell, so I’ll start with you. I have been told
that the creek is poisoned. We must do something!
Or the river will die.

Written 6/6, 6/7, and 6/10/13
© 2013 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.
———————————————
This poem was written for We Write Poems Prompt #160: Metamorphosis. I left Aanteekwa (formerly Helen) in this alternate reality from the last poem for her metamorphosis. This is still mid-September of 1990. At the end of the poem, she meets one of the other characters from Steelville. You’ll know who he is in the next poem.

-Nicole
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as if it were air. And now, they stand on the west bank
of the river, dry, as if they had never passed through the
watery portal. The young man gestures to the river,
the grass, and the dense army of oak, ash, and walnut trees
around them: this is our land. My home is just beyond
the river. Come, and I will show it to you. He turns, and
walks east through the thick crowd of leaf-crowned wooden
souls. She remembers for a moment that the sketch of this
young man in the book was from the year 1740, but chases
this little fact away as she follows him, pushing branches
away from her face as she walks. The trees give way

to open land dotted with a group of domed wigwams; but
they are empty, hollowed-out souls. In front of one wigwam,
two women carefully barbecue a carcass over an open fire, and
one lanky old man with caverns for eyes stares at Helen
warily. Don’t worry, the young man says, that is my
grandfather. The two women are my wives. We are the
last ones left in this village; even our chief has died. Helen

asks the young man, what has happened here? He
exhales, as if trying to send his sadness upon
the wings of a sigh, and replies: Some sickness
came upon our tribe this summer. We do not know
where it came from. Some people from another village
visited us, and after they left the little red dots came
upon our skin with the fevers. Helen asks the young man,
what will you do? and he replies, We can only keep praying
to the Great Spirit and try to survive. Helen peers around
and sees berry bushes plucked bare, bones of small sacrifices
lying just outside the ring of wigwams, and a few errant stalks
of corn bent over with broken backs like sages whose ages
wear heavily upon their shoulders. She turns to her host and
asks him, why have you brought me here? He turns

and looks at her for a moment, offering nothing but
a pregnant silence that she cannot decipher. Then he
answers: In my time, the great river will outlive us. But
in your time, Aanteekwa, it will die. I wanted you to see
the river as we see it before we collapse into the arms
of this great land. She raises her eyebrows. You called me
Aanteekwa – why did you do that? And what does it
mean? He says: you will find out soon enough. Follow me.

Written 6/5/13
© 2013 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.
————————————————–
This poem was written for We Write Poems Prompt #159: the Wizard of Oz Revisited. This land is far from Oz, however; Helen appears to have traveled back 250 years in time and is at a location in Steelville, not too far from the house she grew up in, and near the great river. I won’t reveal what Indian tribe the young man is from, but I will tell you that the tribe’s modern members no longer live in Ohio, although the tribe is not extinct. The events in this poem occur around mid-September of 1990.

-Nicole
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that Mr. LaFleur was a Creole transplant
from the South; but Helen knew better. She’d chatted
with the old brown man after her father had died
and left her this house: he had mentioned a
French Métis ancestor who had married an escaped
slave in Toronto. Mr. LaFleur’s gift by happenstance

was the result of one database at the local historical society
accidentally mating with another and producing
a bastard child – his name had combined
with Helen’s address. No need to return the book,
the lady at historical society said. Please keep it
with our apologies. Helen leafs through the book

on a Sunday evening and finds an old map of Steelville,
drawn in 1810 (mind you, Steelville is only a
nickname – the proper name of the town was written
on the old map). The land was dotted with tiny houses,
a general store, the town hall, and Salem Baptist Church,
the first church founded in the town. The land and her people
were cradled by the great river, a watery arm which
held the town in the crook of its elbow; a little creek flowed
into it from the east, just south of the elbow. Through an
open window, a radio report from a neighbor’s kitchen window
climbs in, grabs her by the ear, and roughly yanks her towards
the crackling words. The state’s Environmental Protection
Agency…in the southern part of the state…close to a
local creek – but the neighbor’s window shuts, and the words
are gone. Another intruder from a passing car stereo

sails his thin body through another open window –
his skin is made of guitar notes like jackhammers and
his bones are born from a few, barely heard lyrics:
watch the blood float in the muddy water. Helen
looks down at the old map and watches the creek
sink its needle headfirst into the great river. The
blood…of the steel mill…floats in the muddy
water. Industrial smack. She blinks at these thoughts,
which spin like brilliant collision stars inside
the bone temple behind her eyes. She now knows
that she must tell someone, or the river will die.

Written 5/28/13
© 2013 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.
————————————————-
This poem was written for We Write Poems Prompt #158: Playing Sherlock. This is the fifth poem in the Helen R. Jones series. The previous four poems in the series are:

P.S. This is the same creek that another character in the Steelville universe, Rachel Hounshell, speaks of in “The Creek”. The events in Rachel’s poem happen sometime in early 1992 (I think).
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She knows the water: her soul is as deep
as the rivers, Langston might say. I think
of this, and she is now African: this
slender dark brown woman, all muscle and adrenaline,
dives below into the belly of the river. She rises up,
breaks surface: and her wide lips like open arms
embrace laughter and sunlight. I think
of water, unchained and ancient, and she
is now a he, brown hair in slick sheets drenched
with the river’s love, and ivory skin tinctured
with the blush of blood and sex. He says nothing, only
grins and swims away from me; in mid-stream,
he looks back and motions for me to follow. Once
I meet him in the center of the stream, he
is now the man I love, amber skin glistening with
diamonds in the sun, his onyx hair lined with silver
veins. We are skin spirits, floating midstream
inside ancient soul: and the best we can do is
dive, summersault, and cast watery crowns
from our heads each time we break surface. We imps
play in its stolen gold, baptized by Eden’s arms
which contain this river, this sun, and the
afternoon fading into golden evening.

Written 5/24/13
© Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.
——————————————————
I again took on Margo Roby’s challenge with a Poem Tryout. This time, we were asked to imagine what our muse looked like and then write a poem about doing an activity — something other than poetry — with him/her/ze/it. I imagined mine as a changeling, since so many different things and people give me inspiration.

-Nicole
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fade into the dirt as the persimmon King of Day
ascends to his zenith throne in the sky. From behind
a regiment of trees another bard emerges, this one
pale and young, himself a prince crowned with russet curls
and wearing black leather and American prayers for
royal robes. He, too, wears a half-remembered face –
this time, from television screens and posters
dusty and half-faded from her youth. Helen, you will need
this to feel. He casually sails a black glistening arm
up to the sky and curls his lithe, white fingers

around the orange orb above their heads. The king
does not protest, but throbs and burns,
turning the bard’s open palm red from his heat. The bard
extends this unbidden fruit towards her, and instinct guides
her brown, dry fingers to pick it up and bring it to
her lips. One bite releases the fruit’s life blood, which drips
as a slow, sticky nectar down her chin: and she devours
its glowing flesh and orange sweetness within seconds. Earth

now sheds her post-winter, crinkled skin of wrinkled brown and
opens her coffers to pour forth Eden’s creatures
into the day. The trees break formation and
scatter themselves all over the breasts and belly of
this land, which is now carpeted with fine green blades
and flowers reaching buds of secret beauty and
open wombs full of wishes up to the sky. Bisecting
this newborn land is a virgin river
replicating the land and sky in her ancient dance of
wave and flow. A laurel wreath of black curly hair
encircling a brown bald dome of skin breaks the river’s
surface, and the third bard emerges from the river’s center,
walking from the midst of her deep soul to
her lucid, clear edges to the bank where Helen
is standing. She knows his face: this bard was the Negro
who spoke of rivers and who sung America. He

turns to the river and holds out a golden, gem-studded
chalice towards the watery artery, which lifts up
from the earth at the bard’s silent command and
pours herself into the cup. The bard passes the chalice
to Helen. Drink, my sister: you will need this
to speak. She takes it from his hands and carefully
drink the soul into her bosom in deep draughts; and
the whole word, edge to edge, light to light, dark to dark,
vibrates as the three bards stand before her. You will
see the unseen and hear the inaudible, says the first bard,
the brown man with the carved mountain face. You will
feel the world pass through your skin, says the second bard,
the Dionysus in flesh. But fear not: you will
speak what you have seen, says the third bard,
the toast of Harlem. This world melts away, and

Helen awakes to find herself in her easy chair,
still in her power blue housekeeping uniform,
with the lean orange tabby sleeping on her lap. It is
7:10 A.M., and she has missed her morning bus. She
picks up the phone on the table beside her and dials
for a taxi while the stardust of her dream
falls from her eyes and coruscates inside her mind.

Written 5/20 and 5/21/13
© 2013 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.
—————————————————-
This poem was written for We Write Poems #157: Zen and the soul of body maintenance. I didn’t exactly go with the prompt, but I chose to focus on the mouth, and what Helen intakes through it in a mystical vision of sorts. Bonus question: can anyone guess who the three bards are?

-Nicole

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fistfuls of red liquid fury flung at
the wicked, the dead-eyed, the sleepwalkers,
or even at random passersby when your
rainbow has become enough. Better to
expel the fire than to let it rise up your spine
as sick Kundalini which magically causes
red tracks to bisect your wrists like nail prints
you try to wish away but cannot. I might
disrobe Emperors, herd sacred cows to their
slaughter, or appear in the throats of the
voiceless and then exit as lamentations and
cries for justice. I might come to you as a

story, or a fairy tale, with human imprints
upon every word, every letter, every verse.
Epic heroes arise from my skin to slay beasts,
recover sacred relics, and return home with laurels
upon their heads. Somewhere behind my jaw, a pack
of ugly ducklings transmutes into swans. Shamans
leave their desert dwellings inside my pupils and
walk through skin-searing fire and vacant voids
to find their way back home. And inside my chest,
an ordinary woman has learned how to fly. But

no matter how I come to you, I will
come. I will unfold myself for you and
invite you to examine my contents and
translate them from pictographs into
words. They are what you are blessed with,
and they are what you need to survive.

Written 5/16/13
© 2013 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.
———————————————————
I visited Margo Roby’s blog and found this post in which she invited us to write a poem that describes our own poems through metaphor. I might have went a little left of center for this exercise, but I sure had fun doing it.

-Nicole
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was a tiny, pointy-nosed thing
scrubbing her high-yellow skin to look for
occluded diamonds buried inside her veins or
some sort of princess blood about which
no one in the family had known until
Debutante Emily had arrived, dreaming
of palatial coastal estates, Dorothy Dandridge fame,
and a Lena Horne wardrobe. But

Debutant Emily married Bernard R. Jones,
much to the chagrin of nearly every young man
at Booker T. Washington High School. And for
the next nineteen years, Bernie tried to pry pearls
from his oyster hands, searched for diamonds
hidden in dust decorated corners, and scavenged
behind the red door inside his chest for the
Maharaja’s rubies, but he never found them.

At age two, Helen was
a plump little brown ball of ebullience spewing
complete sentences: but she had
no interest in ruffles and lace. She sported
a crown of unruly umber-colored hair
that would not respond to taming. She didn’t know
her mother wanted diamonds, pearls, rubies, and
a perfect little girl who was more interested
in candy-colored taffeta dresses and parties
than in poetry or jazz. When she began attending

the same Booker T. Washington High School
in 1958, everyone knew that she was
Debutante Emily’s daughter, but they kept forgetting
that she was Helen R. Jones. Meanwhile,
Debutante Emily kept forgetting that
Bernie Jones was a Negro steel mill worker. And
in 1962, the house on Seventeenth forgot that
it had a family living inside of it.

Written 5/14/13
copy; 2013 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.
—————————————–
This poem was written for We Write Poems Prompt #156: It Was a Dark and Stormy Night. I’m not sure how dark or how stormy this is, but I thought I might explore Helen’s origins in this poem. This is the third poem in the series about Helen R. Jones; if you like you can go back and read “Helen R. Jones” and “Liftoff” to learn more about her.

-Nicole
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