Tag Archives: pollution

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Aluna

Stop, and bend your ear low
to the ground. Now listen: the breath is labored,
almost choked in some spots. There are people
who can read these signs like ragged, torn air
leaving the lungs of a tired Mother, and they say
that we are killing Her.
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Protected: NaPoWriMo Poem #12 — Fire Walking

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NaPoWriMo Poem #9: Untitled Cleave, 4/14/10

it’s the way you blame me
your breath like regret
smells like broken whiskey and overdue bills
poor white trash dropping from the smokestacks
that makes me suck in draw in
mine my belly like an empty church
Marlboro wind full of the God that left us
magazine cowboys that I still look for
I know that your arms angels rescued from Greek tragedies
are made of barbed wire Cassandra’s lips runneth over

so that my fingers

 can give you apologies in unspent paychecks
can dance with pencils burn everything that we’ve crucified
and charcoal but they cannot make the magic
you tried to make this our home that we so desperately need
I make mine out of the imprint of your daddy’s shadow
inside sketch paper and the shed skin of erasers
that is made out of mirrors where his last name should be
the creek knows you consult
that polluted goddess full of stink and junk the Oracle of Steelville
she told me to find
that there are steel screams the crooked remains of a life gone to seed
rippling in sine waves prayers
under your skin where blueprints for our exodus
muscle should be I look in the mirror
this is the poison I see Agamemnon
fabulous and modern as a woman
I’m sorry I still smell the smoke in your hair
if you don’t like my mirror – I build pyramids
just reflect how the sun will never see
what’s around me our escape

Written 4/14/10
© 2010 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.
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This poem, a cleave, was written for NaPoWriMo #14: You Want Me to Write a What? over at Read Write Poem. Yes, it’s my prompt. I figured it just wouldn’t be right if I didn’t write for it.

This is in the same vein of some small town poems I’ve already written, for example “Litany to a Melancholic” and “The Creek”. The speaker in “The Creek” is a teenaged girl growing up in a “white trash” area of the same town and is raised by a single mother. She has aspirations of being an artist, and is very talented at illustration. She appears again in this poem — she is speaking in the left hand poem, and her mother is speaking in the right hand poem.

I hope you enjoyed this poem (or shall we say, 3-in-1 poem).

-Nicole
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Litany to a Melancholic

Wordle from Read Write Poem Prompt #105

This poem was written for Read Write Poem Prompt # 105: Borrowed Words.

NEW! You can listen to this poem on Podbean.

The words led me to write a poem involving one of my hometowns, Middletown, Ohio. One of my goals for 2010 is to finish a small book of poems about the small town, especially those that were formed and/or grew as the result of manufacturing plants. The poems strung together will tell the story of the town through the eyes of a few key characters. This poem will (hopefully) end up in that book.

So here you go. And as always, enjoy.

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Forget that the moon is sliced by the
violence of wire smiles that dangle from
pole to pole. I know you – you notice
these things. Like how
each telephone pole itself is a
victim of modern slaughter, their dead, polished wooden husks
standing on display like
conquered corpses to line this
backwoods Appian Way. Like how
the stalks of corn bend their backs in
submission to the wind and nod their spiked blond heads
towards the city – and you might think Continue reading →

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Earth

This sedoka was written for this week’s Monday Mural prompt at Poefusion. Enjoy.

-Nicole
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inert silent earth
lies beneath statued trees and
silver mirrors of water
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