Sara Nicholson - six poems

ORGANIC CHEMISTRY

Bells would have us come from nothing
though cruciform wings
bury no substance in their echo
The spiral vessels like the light
Pink phenomena
appear and mask their instruments
with passages of cells— the bells
repeat, repeal them—
and flesh would write for us
our own organic chemistry
An apse lapses, huffing gold and umber
in the used-up universe
A little purple won’t hurt us
Color is nothing like a gun

 

 


If sky were covered, upbornesque
my face like rounded roses, it is eye
that chooses yer casket to the day
there is this small hole-in-cloud

 

 

 

I’ve never said anything
in complete day, there was happiness
but first came darkling chrome
hidden pinks in a sky


 

 

T H E O G O N Y

The monster
in our own chests

grows blinkers
it’s as if some music box
had unwound itself

ever small parachute
shut tight within

 

 

 

F A I R Y  T A L E

When my castle rises
a figure arises

whenever a figure of home
whoever
rose you up to me.

When my castle furthers
a story of figurines

a thing in the woods
shadow of my form

ones upon a chorus
who root and pine and raise
my house walls.


 

 

Fires entertain no fire with their energy
who doesn’t realize it, so much of spring
is seeing me here, in that handsomer of airs

Zero could be voiced in the cold throat
these northern vowels, it’s like I’m emprecise
sewn out of dances, swallow-in-tin

I leave, I take up, I go out, I take with me
parcels alotted us of the verbal moon & choir
back of the lusher distances

Prose is a word of terminal blues
some sunrisen never-saw-him-coming
hessian hidden on the eastern side

Light-beam and eye-beam: so much of form
resists its perfect smokescreen, so much from nothing
leaves the woods without a gun

Gown records the maples: it is gown-dust
numbers and colors, colors and numbers
personal is the music of stars


Sara Nicholson lives in Arkansas.