When stars fall, we marvel at what
shakes them loose, trying to see through
the warped glass block view of our tears
long enough to discern whether or not the earth itself
is jarred loose from its setting in the skies and
tumbles down like a errant jewel. We feel
each landing, bracing ourselves for collison,
our hearts grabbing with white knuckled fists onto
ribcage bars to steady themselves — and then, we say
that we cannot handle another impact.
Tag Archives: addiction
WWP Poem # 17: Undertow
Undertow, by Nicole Nicholson
This week over at We Write Poems I asked people to plug one (or more) of their own poems into Wordle and then write a poem using the most frequently occuring words. As I’ve been pretty busy and haven’t written in a couple of weeks, it was a bit of a challenge, but looking at my Wordle again inspired me to create the above. Blow it up, print it out, save it, rotate it, read it. I hope you enjoy.
-Nicole
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Stumble It!
Phantasmagoria
This poem was written for Read Write Poem Prompt #114: All Over The Map. I decided to continue the narrative that began in “Endgame” and continued in “Emmaus”. The words led me to a dream sequence experienced by the character in both poems; it is constructed in three Six Sentences pieces with two short interludes in between. I hope you enjoy the read.
And BTW, please feel free to look at this poem over on the test blog too.
-Nicole
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I. A Dead God’s Chest.
Your mind unfolds, tumbling out jewel-wrapped candy like a cracked-open piñata minted inside a pirate’s fiction. This is the stuff of little boy and girl pretend, of cinemascope phantasms dreamt alive in the dark. It is made out of crowns, galleons, doubloons, and blessed by curses like the clown-painted Aztec god grin baring teeth at you from the face of an underbreath promise: take my treasure and you die, mortal. You laugh like the sunset dancing diamonds upon the water that holds your ship aloft, but a sword swishes wet and red in your ear, drawing its double-dog-dare-you onto a blueprint that looks just like your neck. It’s the eggshell crack that you never hear until your boots break through a wretched, open floor. And on the way down, you will see those boots embedded inside that grin, lodged between eyetooth and incisor as a testament against you, just before your back splits apart upon Hell’s floor.
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Emmaus
This was written for Read Write Poem Prompt # 112: The Narrative Wallpaper. I decided to continue the story from last week’s poem, Endgame. I wanted to see what happened to the speaker in the poem. I looked at a stretch of highway near where I lived and tried to capture how it looked a couple of mornings ago — then, I used it as a backdrop for the poem/story.
Enjoy.
-Nicole
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I watch alien armies of metal men raise
morning above the mist, which itself floats
delicate and dangerous above the freeway. They are
lined up, perfect poles stuck in stationary, rooted in
the cement wall that splits this asphalt in two. First, a line of
grey dancers, poised with arms in a double arc like
wings spread. They hold a yellow streetlight in each palm like a
pair of strange pale eyes above the freeway. Ahead of them, Continue reading
Huddle
behind
two pillars
cream and ruddy
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