Years ago, the concrete poured,
the walls maneuvered into place while the contractors
cast over her face with stone: straighten up. You’ve got
nothing to cry about. Meanwhile,
her glass shatter heart had lain in magnificent crystalline pieces
just behind the giant, cold, gray barrier. Soundproof. No one outside
had heard the shivering while the workmen
took their spare tools to the lucent structure; no one outside
even knew the thing had been made out of glass
to begin with.

Each year, the river had risen, inch by inch,
until the deluge threatened
to spill over the top or make the mammoth walls
buckle. They had slowly forgotten what
they had been placed there for,
the pachyderms with brains wiped clean yet
watching the destruction happen, backs turned
while the glass ruin and dust behind them
tried to reassemble itself every few days. At the
bottom of the river, still sparkling,
faces of the remnants could have been mistaken for diamonds
dumped from a passing galleon’s bowels just before it
plunged itself to the bottom in shipwreck suicide.
Every once and again, the girl had fumbled,
reaching a tentative hand to the river bottom to
find these shards and reassemble them herself: but each year,
the bottom became harder and harder to reach.

Meanwhile, belts and curses had wrapped
their slithering heads around her legs, the woman wielding them
a Medusa, branding the girl’s skin with missives: each epistle
a thief, scuba-diver scuttling to the bottom to steal
sunken treasure. Retard. Dork. Slut. The tears had begun to stop
when she was thirteen. The river rose higher. Sometimes,
she would dive herself, either to cover the treasure with her bruised body
or drown: but meantime, Medusa had dumped her oil curses
into the water. Each time, the girl coming up for air
and shuddering in disgust at the dead, slick waste that
anointed her skin once she broke surface.

Today, the sky is a clear, unveiled face
with a sun’s eye. She checks the surface
of the river, and it speaks in
break apart, slosh together, and break apart again: no chance
to mirror the azure or the solar welcomes above her. She
tries again to plunge a free hand to the river’s bottom and
brush her fingertips against the shards and ground glass dust
lying in collection below. Before, when she used to do this,
she would pull up fingers weeping blood and embedded with
little symphonies of glass; from these,
she would write her poems.

But today, she pulls up nothing: her fingers
cannot touch bottom anymore. And her friend,
with extended arm and invitation to come home with her,
waits on the steps of the bus, which is a perfect exit
to a girl, seventeen, with a dammed-up chest.

Written 4/6/11
©2011 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.
—————————————————-

This poem is a followup to Fifteen, Paint By Numbers”, and
“Sixteen”. I am half-tempted to write a poem for each year of my life up until age eighteen: let’s see what happens with that. I hope you enjoyed the poem.

-Nicole
—————————————————–

Stumble It!

Look at me. I am a map. I have railroad lines,
zipped black teeth that cover five hundred miles of country
easy. Look at the graceful s-curve embossed
into my left shoulder, the straight line love
splitting me into from my navel to my
breastbone. My left leg’s been stitched back on
at least three times, the scars now a trio of
whispering trajectory curves from pubis to gluteus,
tracing their flights around my boy-toned hips. And
see the little indentations, the bite marks
circling my right wrist: that is from where
I lost my right hand back in ’94. It was reconnected
ten years later – but sometimes the fingers don’t move,
the knuckles don’t shout and flex,
and my pen lies limp.

This is the cheap way of living.
You close exits. You sew up tears.
You swallow blue lumps. You
shove oceans under your tongue until they turn to acid
to prevent their escapes. You
learn to love ratty old black thread and
sharp chrome slivered pain because
you cannot find gloved hands, a clean room, or
a masked stranger wearing antiseptic green to
repair you. You buy more black thread
with footsteps like coins, your bare feet in flight
blurred together, heartbeats that forget to touch
the ground. The shortest distance between two points
is not a straight line: it is how
you pinch the length of time between them shut
with your endless running. Problem is,
no one ever tells you that you gain those coins
by trading in your own breath.

Written 7/8/10
© 2010 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.

—————————————————————–
This poem was written for WWP Prompt #10: Object Poems. Mallery instructed us to write a poem concerning an object: look at it from multiple angles, consider how it feels and tastes, its use, its shape, and so forth. I went a little beyond the object itself, which as you know from the title is a needle and thread. I hope you enjoyed reading this poem.

-Nicole
————————————————

Stumble It!

Visual Poem, Version 1 (Click to View)

Visual Poem, Version 2 (Click to View)

Visual Poem, Version 3

Visual Poem, Version 4

—————————————————————-
When the stars bleed through pinholes
like a heroin serenade walking up the tracks
of an earthquake arm where veins are fault lines
and bruises are epicenters where footfalls land;

when parking lot lamps like whiskey lights
strike matches in the darkness below those stars
and cut their own amber sorrowed glow with the
straight spine shadows of their steel pole bodies;

and the bottles shine and call to you,
green bottle fly,
effervescent empty like the drunk drown
that they used to carry;

and you are cleaner than the world,
and you are sixteen years old,
and you wring scars and blood out of your wings nightly
when no one is looking;

when the drought pools inside your belly,
resting below your sternum,
little ribcage light sitting atop your spleen
like a throne, the little god you throw petals to,
offer your scars like penance to,
your blood like incense to, and get back
blessings of tears like Holy water from;

that, my friend, is when the bottle breaks,
the fingers speak, and the hand screams,
wrist to palm connecting with a fluid joint
fury. There is no shriek like glass
unraveling itself onto asphalt, below whiskey parking lot
lights, below those molting trickle-down junkie stars,
at shopping cart feet round like your days
that never end and swallow themselves until
tail becomes head and you walk on the bumps of the bone,
up the spine of the Ouroboros, never finding exit. You are

still the cleanest thing alive, but
try to tell them that,
No Scars, No Blood, No Bones,
No Ragged, No Wings. Every cut, every jaw of glass
lying open and unhinged on the pavement,
is your testimony.

Written 6/21/10
© 2010 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.
———————————————————-
Notes:
For the Big Tent prompt, we were instructed to freewrite and then construct a poem from our freewrite with the statement, “I want to write about __________ but I don’t know how”. In my case, I chose an incident from when I was sixteen, at work at my first after school job at a local grocery store. It was already past sunset, and I’d been sent outside to gather carts. I was angry, upset, and full of pent up everything from what was happening at home. I spied some beer bottles on the parking lot pavement and…well, you already read the poem. And I grabbed four of the words from Irene’s Wordle over at We Write Poems: drought, drown, circle, and sorrow.

-Nicole
——————————————-

Stumble It!

-Nicole
————————————–

Life is crucifying me tonight.
That motherfucker has pinned me to the wall
of nightmare
and has strapped a highway belt
across my stomach. It knows why: I could count
the dots in my skin, and they look like

Milwaukee, Winnepeg, Minneapolis, Phoenix,
Flagstaff, and Middletown, Ohio – each
in its concrete, freeway exit, and mile marker glory. My back
is pockmarked and bruised from their eruptions
beneath my surface, Richter scale aftershocks
sent up my spine every time that my roots
were torn out of soil. I swear that
if I judge from the numbness in my sacroiliac alone,
then I must have a legion of neurons missing.

Friends used to slip through my fingers. Their faces
would become ghosts breeding and multiplying
in my little arms while I lay in the backseat
of a highway-bound wagon
that exacted sick satisfaction from my veins
every time its tires traveled
outside the limits of whatever city
that I was calling home. When I was twelve, I thought
that I might as well tattoo “new kid” into my forehead, write my
desolation and difference
in six inch-inch high black letters. Dig the needle in
extra-deep to make it bleed,
make the weeping outside match
the weeping inside. Meanwhile, I
pretended to like turning into tumbleweeds and dust
every third year, pretended that the cry for adventure
that called up from bones was my own. But I don’t, and
it isn’t.

And now, I have these artifacts:
pine trees from Fr. Tuthill
that began growing out of my feet in 1983
until my legs started mistaking themselves
for wooden trunks,
and Sonoran, spine-studded saguaro
that began shooting out of my back in 1985 –
when I was fourteen, I even began
ejecting spines out of my skin
to warn passersby: I am nomadic, and I am
toxic! Snow from the shrinking shoulders
of Lake Michigan’s shoreline
has dusted my collarbone since 1977, and
a Manitoba, square-block ice house
was built in my brain back in 1978. Not only that,
the Great Miami River
wound its blue-green, ribbon self
around my throat back in 1988 – and I am still
choking.

But in this dream right now, I see trees. They beckon me,
scattered in sunlight
that casts gold onto a bed of broken leaves
at their rooted feet. This spray of light,
edged with rainbows written in shades of yellow,
spills onto a forest clearing. Above me,
a canopy of leaves shattered by sky
dangles a fuzzy, silver web from its belly. In it,
a spider weaves,
casting thread from point to point
in an octagonal dream,
connecting my past to my future
in a serene telegram from the Great Spirit. And
it reads:

Because you were sand scattered
across the back of America, nothing will ever fetter you
unless you choose to rest your wrist
inside the open-and-close empty of a manacle’s mouth. You will find
freedom in your loneliness. Carry dreams
pulled from the feet of your cities in your head,
spin the future from your pen. Pull pain
from your mud, fold yourself into a lotus –

and when you open up again,
you will project the star canopy sky
out of your arms for others to see. And thank the Great Spirit
for your pain – it is who you are: but you must
never hold onto it so tightly
that your limbs freeze into brittle and broken.

I sit in the clearing below the web,
study the message again, marvel at the truth spelled out
in furry silver, and let the sunlight
fall upon my face
until it is time to leave this chimerical circle
once cleared by Algonquin hands. It is time now
to go home.

Written 9/8/09 and 9/9/09
© 2009 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.

Stumble It!

-Nicole

——————————————

The breeze blows through the
window, billows the curtains, flies those
gentle blue flags on worn steel rods, and then blows
down the coastline of your back. Somewhere,
a river comes undone
and hurls itself to Earth in tiny, shattered pieces
beyond our bedroom window. Dreams

have rolled me around on their rollercoaster backs
before hitching a ride homeward
and fading from my eyes into a
fogged lavender horizon. My jack-hammered back,
curved convex and crying ache,
is their testimony.

These dreams
have turned their teeth on me lately. Last night,
I was staring down the slick, yellow gut
of a giant wolf spider breathing
chitin jaws and rancid threats of hunger
into my face. And tonight, my skies
light up with nightmare yet again. Hitler
goes salacious, aiming his strange arrow of skin up at the
pack of Valkyries that Wagner sails over my head,
marching mad armies across my plains and
sending Sylvia Plath daddy trains to come and
collect my flesh suddenly studded with
gold six-pointed stars for the fire. Stravinsky has found the
joys of acid and peyote and sends
a battalion of sword-wielding violins insane
and hungry for my neck. I appeal

to the cosmos. Nietzsche
gives me a mirror and a sturdy pair of boots. Kierkegaard
hands me sword and shield. The Council of Poets
does not deliberate, does not ask me any
questions: I am simply handed
a pen. Meanwhile,

diodes spark and burst
into blazing electric blue-haloed flame,
burning bone and buzzing muscle. I come up
gasping for air from a warm, sticky ocean
and fling myself onto already damp
sheets. And I find
your fingers writing sonnets into
my shoulders, unwinding ropes that had
twisted themselves inside my skin, and
sending ice to quench the horsemen’s fire that had
scorched the nape of my neck. I am
safe again for another night.

Written 8/20/09
© 2009 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.

Stumble It!

I borrowed heavily from concepts in Jungian psychology, Freudian psychology, and Kabbalah to write this — and thus it is a multi-part, somewhat lengthy work. I’ve been troubled by a lack of creative energy lately, so this work was a blessing to me. I hope it touches you in some way.

Oh, and by the way, enjoy.

-Nicole

——————————————
i. psyche

a hollow school room
looking like eighteen and ninety four
everything is wooden
and silent: open-mouthed chairs
wordless desks scrubbed
of paper and language
outside
the snow is falling

ii. superego

she wears a suit of drowned skin
her face an impossible matrix
of wrinkles
she recants
and decants
fire from life
and spits the embers out
into the somber coals
lying inertly in her fireplace
this is where desire expires
and life comes to die
her spectacles

gold-bordered and clear-lensed
their serene roundness barks irony
at the sharp slicing square-ness of
her mind
they sit on a wooden bench, staring up
and reflecting little versions
of her in their eyes: she

of the hair pulled back in strained strands
pre-traction pre-baldness yet unspoken
except for the pain
caught up in her round wound bun
perched perfectly at the back
of her skinny head
and her dress

weeps overcast sky in
perfect techni-non-color while her
black boots click oppression upon the floor
not even polite enough to mimic
castanets, they sound out
her “nos” and “musn’ts” before she
even arrives in the room
we hear these drums
of death

she approaches

iii. animus

gold straw hair forms
spun golden coils atop his head
square angled jaw of Gibraltar rock
carved in peach pale rough flesh
wrapped in loose navy
button-down and denim
he waits

hidden by the darkness of
a wooden unlit corner
heavy round black toe tapping
tick tock
tap tap
a countermelody to the
distant schoolmarm drums approaching
clenched fist, fetal fingers
they ache

for neck
and knife

iv. shadow

auburn clouds
of perfect kink
erupt from her head and
burning black eyes
pierce her smoke veil – a
cloak of black wool reduced down
to tulle and wrapped around her, oak-colored
and pillow-skinned
another corner hides her
she is wearing black

and has been
since nineteen eighty three

v. inner light

a crystalline violet wind
like purple Easter basket cellophane
blessed with a bit of iridescence
it reflects rainbows through its skin
and drags fringed fuchsia fingers
behind it and
carries stellar spheres in
its back – ten orbs of liquid glow
spinning golden nimbi around
their smooth skins
it blows through
this hollow wooden room

it was always here

vi. la petit mort

the death drums
fall silent
and a cold black eye
encircles the caught shadow
frizz on overdrive
waiting in a corner

“I thought I was
rid of you!”

her hands
blue rivers running through milky plains
one pulls a giant wooden paddle from
the air
the other pushes the
lump of blurry black wool
across a desk and aims
for what she guesses is an ass
but

before she can land the first blow
the violet wind enfolds him
and now, he glows behind a
purple lucent curtain and
his pale hand swallows
her accordion-fold neck
push back
pin to the wall
she becomes a temporary
Mona Lisa, face written in terror:
exploding eyes
mouth open in an ever futile inhale
he says

“I’m sorry
you’ve gone far enough
I have no choice”

quickly, deftly
he draws a slender scarlet line
across her wrinkled parchment neck
his silver blade screams green
under the overhead florescents
multiplying a ghostly gleam
to the eyes of all beholders
and she falls

wings spread body curling
feet inhaled by mouth
this gray ouroboros
spinning forever like
an insane wheel of fortune injected by
lightning while her eyes
ejaculate red rivers two perfect beams
of blood spray, knocking her spectacles
up again a random wall and now
they crack – one single, jagged bolt of
tacit lightning divides each lens
she hits

the ground
and unfolds into
a tan hourglass angel wrapped
in white robes and wearing
a tumble-down of black waves
spilling upon her neck
she looks up

and the cold eyes now
gently burn warmth
they are a pair of total solar
eclipses – glowing black marbles
haloed in soft sunshine coronas

“where am I?”

four hands reach out to her
two pale, two tan
encased in pure violet glow

“welcome home
we’ve been waiting
for your return”

Written 7/10/09

Stumble It!

-Nicole

———————————
she looks in the mirror and wonders
where he is
those nights
when the screaming grows so loud
that it fills up her throat, pours out of her mouth,
and expands to fill the room
from wall to wall
she prays

that maybe her mass of screams will grow so large
to push furniture to the walls
stuff the closet
pin her bed to the floor
and be a hard black bubble
pushing the walls out
making them buckle
and you know it’s there because you
can’t get through the doorway
then maybe
she will never feel those rough hands
on her chest ever again –
you see

sometimes changing into a boy
is easier than bearing the burden
of a girl who prays almost nightly
for the mattress to swallow her
when she hears heavy feet in the hallway
outside her bedroom door
a goosestep Nazi march signaling her nightly death
when the stars outside her window
look away and pretend not to see
while she is caught in the gas chamber
of hot sick breath upon her skin
she prays
that maybe one night, she will
suffocate
and leave a real corpse on the mattress
but

for now
she changes into a boy
his name is Jack
sometimes
Jack piles his hair into a knitted black cap
traces his eyes with black pencil
hoping that these borderlines
will dam up rivers of tears
hides invisible scars swimming
beneath his unbroken skin
under liquid black leather
and zippers gaping with metal teeth –
he’s armed

and ready
and silently
somewhere beneath this fool’s armor
barely touching the border between
conscious mind and unthought territories
is the hope
that someday he will grow up
and protect her

Written 4/7/09
© 2009 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.

Stumble It!

This was written for two purposes: 1) for Read Write Prompt #70: In Your Face (poetry, that is), and 2) a personal project.

-Nicole

———————————————

Tell them you came & saw
& look’d into my eyes
& saw the shadow
of the guard receding
            - Jim Morrison

Darkness and storms in my eyes – but
I can see your windows clearly. So clearly, they

speak to me,

telling me of dreams pulverized – slapped
across the face, shoved face first into
dust, kicked until their bones cracked
and angels bled and cried for mercy on their
tortured behalf. And fantasies – drowned
until they died in twilight, exhaling gasps and then
nothing but a slow dying whimper. I know that

resurrection

is a tricky business – but you do it well. You’ve already
killed the guards. Shot down the first line
of the regiment and sent the others fleeing,
dropping bloodsteps dripping from arms
of your bullet wounds. Tracking blood away
from the scene in their scenic bootprints, which
look awful good up against the stark concrete
in your eyes. Now,

I see you,

with that sonic concrete in your eyes that
begs for garlands, rainbows, incense dying
to give birth to new life, and noise to fill
the empty echoes left behind inside your mind
by murdered hopes. Or better yet,

let’s rip up and banish
your concrete gulag

to some Hell
that not even Dante can reach by a nightmare’s
journey to paint for us in thirteenth-century
fire-and-brimstone colors. Let’s

tear it down,

for I’ve looked through your windows
and seen
that the shadow of the guard has
receded. Now let’s

roll away the stone

and get to work on your
resurrection.

Written 3/16/09
© 2009 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.

Stumble It!

This bop was written for Read Write Poem Prompt #67: Share the Bop. A bop is a (roughly) 26 line poem with three stanzas and a refrain that repeats three times in the poem. The bop is usually structured like this (however, you can modify or expand on the form):

-Nicole
———————————————-

Caught between you two,
I was a ladybug –
spread my wings, and I flew;
spread my wings for the two of you;
spread my wings, and I knew
your love. Now, I hear your voices:

“I want to fix you;
I want to set your wings”;

for the land died, sinking beneath watery surfaces
to rest in an ocean floor grave. So I shed my wings,
shed my body, and gave up my ghost –
tried to fly away home;
but how do you fly away home
when home is now under the sea, too many
leagues to count on just two ladybug wings?
And I still hear you:

“I want to fix you;
I want to set your wings.”

Names forgotten, bodies exchanged: yet our souls remain the same.
I call for you both and hear your echoes return to me.
I swallow your voices, eat your words, let their
drops of gold swim alongside blood cells through my veins.
Your gold flows to my tendons, reconnects tissue,

fixes my wings.

Now, I want to fix you.
I want to set your wings.

Written 2/23/09
&;copy 2009 Nicole Nicholson except words in italics, which were graciously donated by RWP’er Angie. All Rights Reserved on original material by N. Nicholson.

Stumble It!