The word for me is wings, you dig? I have been
looking for mine since I was twelve,
trying to fly solo, riding dolo on the backs of words
ripped from the tip of an ink pen. My hands
are stained with the pain that I gained
from stealing morphemes out of ink, but I have
no regrets – given the chance, I would do it again.
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Tag Archives: We Write Poems Prompt
Sleeping Beauty Busts a Few Myths
I am not like other women. I try not to be
like other women. I have slept
on a mattress housed inside of a glass box
for years. I have never owned any spinning wheels
except a mind that whirls around in frenetic, dervish
fashion: because of it, I often see quadruple. But those
four pomegranate seeds in my stomach have caused me
more trouble than they were worth.
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Ballpoint Pens (for Rizana Nafeek)
If I were to visit you right now, I’d
hand you a pen and tell you to write. Do they have
pens in Heaven? Even a lousy little ballpoint
to welcome a poet like me when she dies
would be more than enough. I would
give you my pen and ask you to tell me
everything that is buried inside your head.
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Saga
This is the saga of a
frizzy-haired little brown girl wonder
that stuffs entire libraries inside her jacket.
She is lassoed through the eye, tethered to
every little glistening lavender ball of fairy
dust and every turquoise sun that rises over
kachina heads. She replays the limbo dance of
sunsets, the rainbows of staffs and clefs, and the
Kundalini coils of incense stretching to full length and
rising up to touch Heaven.
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Dear John
When did you find the courage
to press hesitant, uncertain fingertips
on each little tiny stitch that lines your sternum?
Was it one morning lying next to a sleeping Yoko
when you discovered the dividing line that keeps
a human being closed and silent,
his pages slammed together with
scrunched, gritted teeth shoulders touching each other
and screaming testimonies that have yet
to touch the moon, the stars, and the sun?
And what made you decide to slide
fingernails under thread highway center lines
and then rip each little piece of cord
from its roots?
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Midwinter: Sound and Fury
I.
Cold breath claws its way upward, talon over talon, out of a lung cocoon to merge with the dirty cotton candy morning. We listen to each piece of its lavender, thistle gray, and filthy white whisper the news of its exit. Beneath this flock of ragged, dingy daybreak harpies we hear the sun charging upward, chasing them away with its blazing, lustful tangerine growl.
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Three Perfect Sentences
I.
In my dreams, withered leaves shaped like crumbled persimmon hands fall at my feet. They join the spent ballots that have already landed and lay trampled beneath my soles. These crowds of little martyrs give up their ghosts, singing the blues as they tumbled down to Earth, weary and relieved of their former use.
III.
My rearview mirror has captured a frizzy-haired little brown girl wonder that stuffs entire libraries inside her jacket. She runs, trying to keep up with the adults who have forgotten that she is following them. Errant books slide out from inside the crawl space between fabric and body and escape, dropping to the ground behind her.
VIII.
Consider the lilies and orchids of a dream. Royal colored blooms of violet and gold open their secrets to the sun, revealing velvet throats housing pistil and stamen vocal cords. I spend my dreamtime plucking flower heads from their frail green necks and making them kiss, dumping pollen songs into their shameless, eager mouths.
Written 11/16/12 and 11/19/12
© 2012 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.
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These poems were written for We Write Poems Prompt #132: Three Perfect Sentences. We were instructed to write poems consisting of three perfect sentences each. I’ve written eight so far, but wanted to share three of them out of this collection.
These turned into short prose poems, each one paragraph, each three sentences long. For this exercise, I define a perfect sentence as being one which expresses either a) one complete thought, or b) one complete poetic image. I tried very hard to avoid overly complex, compound, or run-on sentences, although in some cases the image or thought I expressed demanded some complexity in its wording. I have an idea to keep writing more of these and turn them into a chapbook. I’ll keep you posted.
-Nicole
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