WWP Poem #1: Detonate

I am a box of nerves,
a bead curtain of tangled arteries: messengers,
blue and livid in the sunlight. They are
wire sapphires running silent underneath this skin
of clothes. Point to point heartbeats traveling up and down
my limpid tubes, my wonderlands in lapis lazuli.
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News Update: New Prompt Sites and a New Blog

Hello readers,

I wanted to make sure that you were aware of three new writing communities that have arisen in the wake of Read Write Poem closing down:

  • We Write Poems, which is comprised of several former Read Write Poem community members — I’ll be a regular contributor for prompts and articles
  • Writer’s Island, which has been reopened by former Read Write Poem community member Rob Kistner
  • Big Tent Poetry, also comprised of some former Read Write Poem community members — here there will be weekly prompts as well as mini-challenges

Also, I should mention that I have opened a second blog, Woman With Asperger’s. I began this blog as a way to share my experiences with being a woman with Asperger Syndrome, to communicate with others like me, and to chronicle my journey in understanding it an other autism spectrum disorders. I will be posting very minimal poetry there, and in most cases will try to link back to Raven’s Wing Poetry. You don’t have to be an Aspie to visit — come on over and take a look around!

-Nicole

NaPoWriMo Poem #28: Letter to My Father

Dear Dad: have you ever seen the
burning blade, the straight edge of a knife’s
tongue? From this, we are branded with bruises. This silence,
this tradition of disguise, is a generational curse,
a baton passed from Grandma to you to
me – and I am still running.
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NaPoWriMo Poem #26: Box

There is a box. It is
wooden, a mistreated servant made out of
rot and blood stains. It holds
some of my years, the ones where
the mirror looked like broken teeth and empty
bedrooms. Sycamore legs that looked like
fear, shaking and stripped of bark to show
the white underneath. Prom nights, spent at home,
full of wishes that I could emerge, full-winged, instead of
an earthbound thing, soft and hairy, many-legged, with a upturned belly
like a dog’s fear gone white and asking for teeth. And a
tattered gospel, its chapter and verse preached to me
in slaps and insults.
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Protected: NaPoWriMo Poem# 24: Scapegoat

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NaPoWriMo Poem #19: Unravel

You think that I’m brave to tug at my own skin,
pull on the little ends of yarn that I see poking out:
little parades of frayed cotton trees in every color. I have
thousands of them, most of them congregating up and down
my spine. But the truth is,
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NaPoWriMo Poem #18: Dust

I used to believe in you.

Your name was Normal. You were a fantastic idol,
a phantasm made out of God, pedestal-high,
queen of all things that I could never touch. You
wore my face like perfection even better than I did. Body
shrunken to the size of late night cock dreams. You
had no script, nothing to consult – the words were just
sliding through your brain, reconstructing every synapse like
mere connections between hemisphere and region were not
enough. And I,
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Protected: NaPoWriMo Poem #13: Six Things About the Asperger Woman

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NaPoWriMo Poem #7: How to Paint the Mona Lisa (A Pantoum)

Mona Lisa

Mona Lisa

It takes twelve years to paint her smile.
Feel your own lips, read the Braille in their contours.
Pull ribbons of secrets from under your tongue.
Whisper them onto the canvas.
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