Tag Archives: jesus

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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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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?
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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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WWP Poem #31: Miriam

There is an exit just below my navel
where the stars began: one escaped
and drifted low to the earth, riding the navel
of a cornflower sky to point its way to birth. Cocooned
inside me, your crowned yourself for entrance, robed yourself
to rival the night with red, flesh tone like the blush of sienna
that wraps my bony frame, and yet-to-open brown eyes
with double visions that layer themselves on top of each other: one from
the descendants of Adam’s dirt, and the other
from Heaven.
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WWP Poem #4: Iscariot

I lean upon this door and feel the fabric of the wood –
splinter-down, cragged skin, brown crooked canyon marvel –
against my fingers and cheek. Try to
press my shoulder into it, make it ache
like stones in a path pressing their backs into the
bottoms of your feet, like the
weight of a wooden cross upon a ripped-apart back,
a shoulder scribbled upon in red, skin inscribed
by a whip. Try to press the door into
the valley next to my neck, and listen for the moan
of my bowed collarbone: but nothing works. I cannot
carry stars across my shoulders like you do – not in
this courtyard, where you handed me the knife
and told me to dig in.
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The Egyptian

I wrote this for Read Write Poem Prompt # 78: Kiss Me, Amelia Earhart. I decided to approach this a little differently, as there are so many historical figures I would like to write about — so this is kind of a longer narrative of how one woman graces the lives of several. Also, I decided not to limit myself to the idea of love in the romantic sense — but it is here, as you can see in the poem. I hope you like it.

And BTW, I highly encourage you to click on the links for further understanding. They will open in another tab or as a pop-up window, depending on your browser. One can understand the poem without them, but after my first experiment with hyperlinked poetry, it seemed that this one begged for it.

-Nicole

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i.

green jaws
seize a brown body
clamp down
the crocodile is hungry
this young woman will do

white triangles
stained, dripping with red
color the Nile carmine
in this spot
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Guadalupe

This triptych poem was written for this week’s Totally Optional Prompt, which is “expectations”. Though I am not Catholic, I have long been fascinated by the story behind the Virgin of Guadalupe (known as Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe or Virgen de Guadalupe, and where I work, I have seen several depictions of this apparition of Mary in artwork, which inspired me to write this poem. Enjoy.

-Nicole

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yellow roses in the desert December’s surprise
I take them mockeries of common sense
from this hill a frozen desert dream is shattered
her imprint burned in my back
in cloth a sudden, shining miracle carries her testimony
sings her Gift an embrace hotter than ten million suns
Madre de Dios Madre de Dios Madre de Dios

Written 11/11/08
© 2008 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.