Tag Archives: read write poem prompt

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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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Stumble It!
Stumble It!

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Poem: Smoke Signals (For RWP #120)

Gathering, by AlicePopkorn

Gathering, by AlicePopkorn

(for Phoebe Prince)

Headlines screamed your name to me. When I read the
story, I thought that you had lost your wings. You can’t fly
hanging by your neck, enclosed inside
a closet womb. I want to give you
my wings, rip all the fire from off my back and
ignite yours. Wipe the dawn with your shadow, paint the morning
with your fire. But all that I can pull from my own wings
is black feathers. I can only ignite them and
hope that the wind catches the smoke and
carries it away. Spell your name with smoke,
grieve your senseless exit with flames.
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Protected: Poem: Speaking In Tongues (Inspired by RWP Prompt #120)

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Poem: Backwards (for RWP #119)

(for Jefferson Nicholson)

Backwards: how to walk it
is the question. It involves paper, microfilm, and
old stories. Names are Gospel,
passed from lips to ears. Footprints stay put when
written down.
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Poem: Crucify (for RWP Prompt #118)

Read Write Poem Wordle #118

Read Write Poem Wordle #118

In the handsome dark, we fumble for doubloons
lying dead on the pavement.
Little minted mirrors of gold, magenta, turquoise, emerald, and
polished purple riot like the wine soaking into the costumed madness
around us: this swirling, detonated rainbow
of beads, feathers, fire, and flesh. It is fringed, open-mouthed, and
dripping beautiful fermented stink from its lips.
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Poem: Confession (For RWP #117)

The book was laid open beside your head, which was
turned sideways so that you blew a wind of breath
across its face as you slept. Once again you slept where you fell,
a shadow of an angel collapsing in a corner, onto stone, with your
window shades shut to words and the
dimming amber of light that deliquesced itself onto the walls and floor
of your bedroom. This time was a record: you’d fallen into dreams
less than five feet from your own bed. We laughed, and
left you sleeping.
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Catabasis


Charon by H. Koppdelany

Rock me to sleep across the Styx until the boatman holds my cradle;
a sun point in the distance calls us all.
We’ll wander white fields of smoke and dust
while congregations of snow blow like low-flying angels around our feet.
We want to touch that sun;
but we cannot lay holy man hands on it until we
shed our bodies like bad dirt.
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February 2010 Read Write Poem Mini-Challenge Poem #5: The Devotee

Midnight. I trace the borders of this town with my two feet
under a blanket of stars. Darkness clings to me,
washed away by scattered pairs of headlights
shining like broken beads spilled onto the road
and rolling past me as I walk. August smells like
spent bonfires coughing up their burnt wood ghosts and
warm rain spilling its heavy and humid funk onto
dirt and concrete. I am naked; I am wet;
but I don’t care.
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February 2010 Read Write Poem Mini-Challenge Poem #4: You Don’t See It

You don’t see it, but some days
I drag moonlit danger behind me like a veil of milky dust
casting itself off of my crown. I balance
armies of fire on the backs of my arms and
use them for wings. I hear
the stars rubbing their legs together for the want of music
and hanging gold fiddled notes on Venus’ earlobes. They
chime, making love in the solar wind.
I strap bass lines onto my back;
wrap chain mail angels around my chest;
strap thunderclouds to the soles of my feet;
and I dance.
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February 2010 Read Write Poem Mini-Challenge Poem #3: Delirium

This is my third piece for the February 2010 Mini-Challenge over at Read Write Poem. This month’s challenge directed us to gather a poet’s work around us, pull out or underline lines we really liked, and then construct at least two centos, or patchwork poems (one each on days one and two, of course) from those lines. On day 3, we have the option of either writing another cento or parting ways with the lines and writing our own poems based on or inspired by our chosen poet.

I chose to do another cento using Arthur Rimbaud’s lines.

And you can read all of my February Mini-Challenge Poems here.

-Nicole
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I have swallowed a fabulous dose of poison. On my
hospital bed, an overpowering smell of incense wafts over me:
guardians of the holy oil, confessors, martyrs. I have a
pillow over my mouth, they can’t hear me, they’re
phantoms. I’m no longer in the world; life’s clock
has stopped. Yes indeed, I’ve shut my eyes
against your light;
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February 2010 Read Write Poem Mini-Challenge Poem #2: The Prophet

This is my second piece for the February 2010 Mini-Challenge over at Read Write Poem. This month’s challenge directed us to gather a poet’s work around us, pull out or underline lines we really liked, and then construct at least two centos, or patchwork poems (one each on days one and two, of course) from those lines. On day 3, we have the option of either writing another cento or parting ways with the lines and writing our own poems based on or inspired by our chosen poet.

I chose Arthur Rimbaud.

And you can read all of my February Mini-Challenge Poems here.

-Nicole
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I have a horror of all trades. In my vision I saw
a million charming creatures moving in time to
beautiful church-music, Power and Peace, noble ambitions, and
lord knows what. These, it was promised, would
bury the tree of good and evil in absolute darkness, would
banish despotic proprieties, freeing us to love purely
in the pure land. It’s the vision of numbers; eternity, the
shoreless ocean in the sun.
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February 2010 Read Write Poem Mini-Challenge Poem #1: The Fire This Time

This is my first piece for the February 2010 Mini-Challenge over at Read Write Poem. This month’s challenge directed us to gather a poet’s work around us, pull out or underline lines we really liked, and then construct at least two centos, or patchwork poems (one each on days one and two, of course) from those lines. On day 3, we have the option of either writing another cento or parting ways with the lines and writing our own poems based on or inspired by our chosen poet.

I chose Arthur Rimbaud.

And you can read all of my February Mini-Challenge Poems here.

-Nicole
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The epic of a madness. Ecstasy, nightmare, sleep, in a
nest of flames. I summoned pestilence so I could choke on
sand, on blood. I buried the dead in my bowels. I’ve got a
taste for almost nothing anymore but dirt and stones. Feed on
broken bricks, on bits of scree and the old stones in churchyards; I have
faith in poison.
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