First, it must begin with fire.
The amphitheater, a darkened and silent blank page
laying just beyond a grove of trees rendered in silhouette,
waits for the first, single spark.
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Tag Archives: WWP Poem
Woman
Woman on a Brick Wall -- RONE
From in the shadow she calls
And in the shadow she finds a way
And in the shadow she crawls
Clutching her faded photograph
My image under her thumb
Yes, with a message from my heart
- Tori Amos
The day lights up, cold and blue. Cloudless.
Wings unfolding.
The light gives birth to a woman’s face, plastered onto brick,
watching the streets with two narrow eyes like bisected almonds that drip
faint streaks of branching red below. And she has seen
enough.
For this, she is weeping.
The great mystery of the decade:
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It Will Not Stop
There are birth pains,
and the water breaks in trillion-fold up the coastline spine,
an army marching to where water does not belong –
marching into the streets,
marching into the marketplace,
marching into the suburbs,
marching to obey a command invisible to the ears,
and like Mickey Mouse broomsticks,
it will not stop;
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Fractured Armageddon
Written 3/8/11 and 3/9/11
© 2011 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.
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This poem was composed for the last We Write Poems Prompt, Make Your Own Wordle. I went with writing the poem inside the Wordle itself which the Wordle website spat back out at me — with some modifications and a lot of help from GIMP (an image manipulation program). The original Wordle is below, and I hope you enjoyed the poem. In case you didn’t know, you’ll need to click on the image to enlarge it.
-Nicole
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Stumble It!
WWP Poem #40-2: Trinity
Written 2/8/2011
© 2011 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.
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This poem was also written for We Write Poems Prompt #40: Triptych Relationship. I just couldn’t stop. I decided to take an interesting twist and instead of Heaven/Earth/Man, I changed Man to Woman. This ended up being pretty dark, but I just went where the words led me. I hope you enjoyed the poem.
-Nicole
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Stumble It!
WWP Poem #40/Big Tent Poem: To Bless These Tired Throats
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This poem was written for two prompts: We Write Poems Prompt #40: Triptych Relationship and this week’s Big Tent Poetry Prompt, which was a Wordle. I adore Wordles, and I love triptych poems. Two things inspired this poem: 1) a broadcast on CNN yesterday afternoon about the protests in Egypt, and 2) the fact that today in the Catholic calendar is the Feast of St. Blaise, and throats are being blessed today by priests because of this. I hope you enjoyed this poem.
-Nicole
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Stumble It!
WWP Poem #39, #2: Age of Sun
I. Cork County, Ireland
I’m guessing that you are what lives
in the back of my throat, my fake swagger,
my unlearned fist: but I really don’t know
if it’s you. I chose you as my best guess because of the bloodshed
cutting grooves into your green shoulder, Rebel County;
because of the song that hums just a few inches below your green that
sounds faintly like fiddle, dulcimer, and banjo. The red neck
hides underneath brown skin; every now and again it erupts,
rebel and cheeky face upturned to an August sun. I hear twang in its
whisper. I wish I could still hear the brogue
below the red, below the fist; wrap my tongue around
Corcaigh instead of Cork in a green, pint-riddled and
iron breath.
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WWP Poem #39: Age of Rain
I. Père Lachaise
Funny how graffiti never pulses underneath your palms,
even if it is red,
even if it does look like blood,
even if it does look like letters who have forgotten their boundaries
and have risen up like fresh, city welts on this skin of concrete. Palms prone
on the stone, you wish for a heartbeat beneath it
and yet, you find none. The poet is still
breathing: but not here. Mime
the curtain falling to cloak a greasepaint face
with the flutter of bare hands. Peel back the rain, and you might hear
a piano tiptoeing past your ears.
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WWP Poem #35: A Tale Told by an Idiot, Full of Sound and Fury
I. Challenger
I give you a song I stole from the dirt: I dream a mess
of ley-lines and leptons, plasma fields and turf giants. Last son
of a dead planet, strongest man in the world. I am a nova,
all-exploding, planet-cremating. But there are
many ways to lose the oldest game.
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WWP Poem #34: Prelude
Every cut, every jaw of glass
lying open and unhinged on the pavement is your
testimony. The bottles give up the ghost instead of you, and
the wine lies leaking all over the shattered night pavement. There are
six of you, wine goblets of meandering braided blood vein
and scarlet muscle, crouched and taut: beneath each man’s skin,
a pack of lionesses waiting to spring.
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Protected: WWP Poem #32: Apartment, 17 Rue Beautreillis
WWP Poem #31: Miriam
There is an exit just below my navel
where the stars began: one escaped
and drifted low to the earth, riding the navel
of a cornflower sky to point its way to birth. Cocooned
inside me, your crowned yourself for entrance, robed yourself
to rival the night with red, flesh tone like the blush of sienna
that wraps my bony frame, and yet-to-open brown eyes
with double visions that layer themselves on top of each other: one from
the descendants of Adam’s dirt, and the other
from Heaven.
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