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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Tag Archives: RWP Mini-Challenge
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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Read Write Body Poem #7: Deconstruct
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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Read Write Body Poem #6: Blood
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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Read Write Poem October Mini-Challenge
Read Write Body Poem #5: Curves
This poem was written for the latest mini-challenge from Read Write Poem — write seven poems about the body in the context of October. A conversation that happened while I was shopping for my wedding gown a couple of weekends ago prompted this poem. Enjoy.
-Nicole
P.S. If you want to read everything else I wrote for the mini-challenge, click here.
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I am not blessed with curves that might
invite skiers to slalom off my waist and then
fly through the air as
skis disconnect from ground and then
sail off the curves of my hips. Do not let
the dark skin fool you – I have no junk in my trunk
to speak of. No, I am Continue reading
Read Write Body Poem #4: “Disappear”
This poem was written for the latest mini-challenge from Read Write Poem — write seven poems about the body in the context of October. I didn’t pick a specific body part this time — I went more with the general idea of “disappearing”. Enjoy.
-Nicole
P.S. If you want to read everything else I wrote for the mini-challenge, click here.
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I can fold myself up so small. Bend my kneels, curl my back
until it cracks. Assume a flattened mantis position,
elbows swallowing themselves, wrists closing in on skin
like a pair of taciturn books. I could crush – no, compact myself
until my chicken bones break in the darkness. Knees become useless,
rotating broken legs in every direction. Arms flop, speaking limp doll dialects
until they die of gangrene. Eyes close, pull down the shades
to the light. A line in the silent black, one dimensional,
no longer speaking. The oldest trick in the book, Houdini’s envy – except
I don’t come back to tell you
that I’ve broken the void.
Written 10/11/09
©2009 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.
Read Write Body Poem #3: Feet
This poem was written for the latest mini-challenge from Read Write Poem — write seven poems about the body in the context of October. I chose “feet” for the theme of my third 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 feet are long, fallow roads of wandering, the color of Earth
on a desert day. Thin piano wires of bone
impress their songs under my drum head skin, and hills of knuckle
rise up to stretch it across their angled and arced backs. You could take
my feet for a ride, rival the curves and turns
of a rollercoaster. These long fellows are gifts
from my father.
I’ve always tried to find shoes worthy
of their impossible lengths, grand vessels of
queenly leather of metallic shine and night sky sparkle to
encompass my royal kinks, slopes, and cracking joints. I want
open sky to house the little toes on the end of each foot
that almost curl in fetal silence into themselves, afraid
to release their faces upwards
like their other brothers and sisters. But few and far between
is the workmanship that can cradle my feet in its arms
and wear beauty on its face at the same time. Instead, Noah constructs
a million ugly arks in fake black leather just to hold them, to
interlope between my skin and the ground. I think going barefoot
is underrated — but that’s impossible
in the half-chilled depths of Ohio’s October.
If I ever find worthy vehicles of my feet that can wear
feathers, the precious gemstone children of Earth, or even
fake ruby mirrored elegance as their clothes, then I would gladly
step in and walk. But I wonder
if the vainglory of such peacockery would warrant
the heavens to drop a house
upon my head.
Written 10/9/09
© 2009 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.
Read Write Body Poem #2: Hair
This poem was written for the latest mini-challenge from Read Write Poem — write seven poems about the body in the context of October. I chose “hair” for the theme of my second 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 hair betrays me. In the summer, it curls endlessly
on itself, becomes a nest of snakes hallucinating
and searching for prey first in one direction, and then
the other. As the Kundalini of mercury rises
up the thermometer’s thin glass spine, my hair
also rises – and once that quicksilver line
busts the bottom of ninety degrees and explodes out of the neck
in arced silver plumes, the spines of my curls then kink Continue reading
