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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Tag Archives: WWP Poem Prompt
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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Ancient Fire
Weaving together bones and forging glass hearts,
four letters build each of us with their ancient fire.
Inside my chest lives a bone cage and a crimson soul
singing, translucent, backlit from ancient fire.
King of Equines
Created in an instant,
by a single thought, I was first beheld
resting inside a mind’s palm,
within the deep center of the gray palace of thought
close to the amethyst’s mounting
where the lens of third-eye thought
is forever and intensely focused. Continue reading
Wrecking Ball Missive
Where do I begin? I can sit someplace
and bring the inside blues and greens
of the restaurant into focus. Shutting my eyes,
I see the indoor palm trees as sentinels
near the front door. I’ve already mentioned
the wooden tiki gods, standing wordless
to the entrance to each dining room – but I forgot to mention
that they guarded the giant waterfall in the center
of the restaurant, built into yet another wall
cast in blue and wearing shadows for faces. The shadows
fled from the fire, my dinner set alight
as you watched with amusement. I have
to shut my eyes and use the film from the attic
to see it all again – how dare they tear down
one of our landmarks!
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Begin
Begin
with a little brown baby with
eyes like lenses and film
positioned behind optic nerve cables
in constant transmission: the birthday cake,
the paper brown bag turned into a crinkling toy,
and the yellow walker become a picture of
Birthday Number One. Number Two
is made of a white lace and red velvet dress
and frizzy brown-black hair like a cloud crown
surrounding a little head with a little grin
and the same pair of camera eyes.
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