Fear, by Nicole Nicholson
Occluded forest, the hood over my head:
green fingers folding together,
brown bark teeth in a damp musky mouth,
Bavaria’s finest. With your pen, you
cover me in red, and call me virgin:
color me blood, and call me bruise.
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This poem was also written for two prompts: Read Write Prompt #96: Spam. Spam. Spam. and for the latest mini-challenge from Read Write Poem, which was to write seven poems about the body in the context of October. This, I think, is kind of a more expansive work deconstructing my body in eight parts — hence the title. And a couple of the words from the Wordle prompt ended up in this poem. So, enjoy.
-Nicole
P.S. If you want to read everything else I wrote for the mini-challenge, click here.
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I.
Icicles, cracking
when the wind grows cold: battered bone, the rounded ends of
tibia, fibula, and femur. The dented faces of moons
collide with each other behind shifting knee caps
as I walk. I didn’t know knees
could protest so loudly. The asteroids that hit me
beneath skin were Lyme bacteria – I never saw
them coming. Maybe when I am sunk into the sleep of Earth, they’ll
dig up me up in fossil and wonder if
my femur bone was ever used for batting practice.
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This poem was written for two prompts: Read Write Prompt #96: Spam. Spam. Spam. and for the latest mini-challenge from Read Write Poem, which was to write seven poems about the body in the context of October. I was trying my damnedest not to write another diabetes poem, but this one insisted on being born, so I let it go, writing on the theme of “blood” for my sixth poem. Enjoy.
-Nicole
P.S. If you want to read everything else I wrote for the mini-challenge, click here.
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My blood, it tells on me. Feed the meter, and I can keep parking here
on Earth so long as I
do not keep dumping sugar into my river. I wonder if
by 2020, they will figure out a way to tell
what poisons me, to sketch out the
reprobate carbohydrate faces of my miscreants
on wanted posters in full living digital color
in the Cyclops eye of my glucometer display. Then I might see
some specifics. Maybe a
cosmoramic display of the jelly donuts,
the orders of crème brulée, the chocolate mud pies, or the
giant plates of linguini that passed into my body
without being stopped at the doors
of my lips.
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This was written for Read Write Poem Prompt #42: Catch Some Words. I actually had composed this early this morning, before I even knew about the prompt…..
I had come across the poem “Abortion Stories” when reading a book of Jim Morrison’s poetry…and then found out that the words later became The Doors’ song, “Peace Frog”. These are the words that caught me:
“Indians scattered on a dawn’s highway bleeding,
ghosts crowd the young child’s fragile eggshell mind.”
From there, I was inspired to write “Nightmare”. Enjoy.
-Nicole
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(for J. Morrison)
You were five.
This was when they still called you “Jimmy”.
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This was written for Read Write Poem Prompt #39: Writing for Months, Writing for Mouths. This was inspired by this speech, “Come September” given by activist and writer Arundhati Roy in 2002.
-Nicole
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crimson stains
on white petals
of fist-wide flowers
open white palms to the sky
broad, smiling, innocent
unaware that they are stained
unaware that blood has rained
upon their faces
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I am posting this poem because Good Friday approaches. I tried to capture an image of Jesus, and what he might have been thinking and feeling in those final moments in Gethsemane before he was arrested. Presumptuous, perhaps, but I still tried.
-Nicole
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I weep for you
And for us. All of us.
The storm rages on inside
A velvet heart,
Ripping it to pieces,
Tearing it apart.
If I could bleed outside,
I would -
But I suffice to bleed from within.
