fade into the dirt as the persimmon King of Day
ascends to his zenith throne in the sky. From behind
a regiment of trees another bard emerges, this one
pale and young, himself a prince crowned with russet curls
and wearing black leather and American prayers for
royal robes. He, too, wears a half-remembered face –
this time, from television screens and posters
dusty and half-faded from her youth. Helen, you will need
this to feel. He casually sails a black glistening arm
up to the sky and curls his lithe, white fingers

around the orange orb above their heads. The king
does not protest, but throbs and burns,
turning the bard’s open palm red from his heat. The bard
extends this unbidden fruit towards her, and instinct guides
her brown, dry fingers to pick it up and bring it to
her lips. One bite releases the fruit’s life blood, which drips
as a slow, sticky nectar down her chin: and she devours
its glowing flesh and orange sweetness within seconds. Earth

now sheds her post-winter, crinkled skin of wrinkled brown and
opens her coffers to pour forth Eden’s creatures
into the day. The trees break formation and
scatter themselves all over the breasts and belly of
this land, which is now carpeted with fine green blades
and flowers reaching buds of secret beauty and
open wombs full of wishes up to the sky. Bisecting
this newborn land is a virgin river
replicating the land and sky in her ancient dance of
wave and flow. A laurel wreath of black curly hair
encircling a brown bald dome of skin breaks the river’s
surface, and the third bard emerges from the river’s center,
walking from the midst of her deep soul to
her lucid, clear edges to the bank where Helen
is standing. She knows his face: this bard was the Negro
who spoke of rivers and who sung America. He

turns to the river and holds out a golden, gem-studded
chalice towards the watery artery, which lifts up
from the earth at the bard’s silent command and
pours herself into the cup. The bard passes the chalice
to Helen. Drink, my sister: you will need this
to speak. She takes it from his hands and carefully
drink the soul into her bosom in deep draughts; and
the whole word, edge to edge, light to light, dark to dark,
vibrates as the three bards stand before her. You will
see the unseen and hear the inaudible, says the first bard,
the brown man with the carved mountain face. You will
feel the world pass through your skin, says the second bard,
the Dionysus in flesh. But fear not: you will
speak what you have seen, says the third bard,
the toast of Harlem. This world melts away, and

Helen awakes to find herself in her easy chair,
still in her power blue housekeeping uniform,
with the lean orange tabby sleeping on her lap. It is
7:10 A.M., and she has missed her morning bus. She
picks up the phone on the table beside her and dials
for a taxi while the stardust of her dream
falls from her eyes and coruscates inside her mind.

Written 5/20 and 5/21/13
© 2013 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.
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This poem was written for We Write Poems #157: Zen and the soul of body maintenance. I didn’t exactly go with the prompt, but I chose to focus on the mouth, and what Helen intakes through it in a mystical vision of sorts. Bonus question: can anyone guess who the three bards are?

-Nicole

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-Nicole

fistfuls of red liquid fury flung at
the wicked, the dead-eyed, the sleepwalkers,
or even at random passersby when your
rainbow has become enough. Better to
expel the fire than to let it rise up your spine
as sick Kundalini which magically causes
red tracks to bisect your wrists like nail prints
you try to wish away but cannot. I might
disrobe Emperors, herd sacred cows to their
slaughter, or appear in the throats of the
voiceless and then exit as lamentations and
cries for justice. I might come to you as a

story, or a fairy tale, with human imprints
upon every word, every letter, every verse.
Epic heroes arise from my skin to slay beasts,
recover sacred relics, and return home with laurels
upon their heads. Somewhere behind my jaw, a pack
of ugly ducklings transmutes into swans. Shamans
leave their desert dwellings inside my pupils and
walk through skin-searing fire and vacant voids
to find their way back home. And inside my chest,
an ordinary woman has learned how to fly. But

no matter how I come to you, I will
come. I will unfold myself for you and
invite you to examine my contents and
translate them from pictographs into
words. They are what you are blessed with,
and they are what you need to survive.

Written 5/16/13
© 2013 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.
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I visited Margo Roby’s blog and found this post in which she invited us to write a poem that describes our own poems through metaphor. I might have went a little left of center for this exercise, but I sure had fun doing it.

-Nicole
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was a tiny, pointy-nosed thing
scrubbing her high-yellow skin to look for
occluded diamonds buried inside her veins or
some sort of princess blood about which
no one in the family had known until
Debutante Emily had arrived, dreaming
of palatial coastal estates, Dorothy Dandridge fame,
and a Lena Horne wardrobe. But

Debutant Emily married Bernard R. Jones,
much to the chagrin of nearly every young man
at Booker T. Washington High School. And for
the next nineteen years, Bernie tried to pry pearls
from his oyster hands, searched for diamonds
hidden in dust decorated corners, and scavenged
behind the red door inside his chest for the
Maharaja’s rubies, but he never found them.

At age two, Helen was
a plump little brown ball of ebullience spewing
complete sentences: but she had
no interest in ruffles and lace. She sported
a crown of unruly umber-colored hair
that would not respond to taming. She didn’t know
her mother wanted diamonds, pearls, rubies, and
a perfect little girl who was more interested
in candy-colored taffeta dresses and parties
than in poetry or jazz. When she began attending

the same Booker T. Washington High School
in 1958, everyone knew that she was
Debutante Emily’s daughter, but they kept forgetting
that she was Helen R. Jones. Meanwhile,
Debutante Emily kept forgetting that
Bernie Jones was a Negro steel mill worker. And
in 1962, the house on Seventeenth forgot that
it had a family living inside of it.

Written 5/14/13
copy; 2013 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.
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This poem was written for We Write Poems Prompt #156: It Was a Dark and Stormy Night. I’m not sure how dark or how stormy this is, but I thought I might explore Helen’s origins in this poem. This is the third poem in the series about Helen R. Jones; if you like you can go back and read “Helen R. Jones” and “Liftoff” to learn more about her.

-Nicole
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with a brick wall springing up in front of her
where there was none before, or an
unexpected chain link taunt stretched across
the end of an alley. But not tonight. Her heels

lift, as if a pair of incantations
had occluded themselves inside the shadows
beneath her feet. That magic lights a pair of fires
under her leathery soles and makes them
itch, cry, and burn for open air without
gravity, without surface. Calf muscles contract,
arches raise up for empty air steeped with
promises of flight, and wrinkled brown toes

become commas at the end of this
suspended mid-air sentence, which
rises up past the tops of street signs before
she realizes that she has broken away from the
rest of the text of teenaged gangster kings and
vacant alleys. Helen looks down and sees

one pale, hungry streetlamp casting
a sallow light onto another brown woman,
a ripe plum in this craving darkness
that dares not touch her. The woman looks up
and utters one sentence that shatters the glass
of dream silence around them:
and still, you rise! –
and Helen awakes to find herself

flapping her hands,
which she has not done
since she was eight years old.

Written 5/10 and 5/13/13
copy; 2013 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.

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This poems was written for We Write Poems #155: A Red Letter Day. This was to be about an extraordinary day in our protagonists’ lives, so this is poem number two in my series about Helen R. Jones. I would say in terms of the story line, this happened in 1990, probably during the summer. If you haven’t guessed by the line in italics in the the penultimate stanza, Maya Angelou is the celebrity.

-Nicole

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Westerville, Ohio Rock the ‘Ville Looking for Poets, Authors, and Artists

Helen R. Jones performs this daily worship
of the faithful between two and five minutes
every morning, watching color emerge
and disrupt canvas black, dotted with little
diamonds. She always has trouble
walking away from the window, but she does it
anyway. There is that 7:05 AM bus she must catch.
The itinerary of the morning breathes and pulses in her head,
a drumbeat never failing.

Helen R. Jones then showers and dresses for work
in a blue starched housekeepers’ uniform. This is
what she wears Tuesday through Saturday, and
the blue is nothing romantic: no cornflower, no robin’s egg,
no azure, not even periwinkle – it’s something called
“powder” that looks “off” in the wrong kind of light;
it could pass for cinereal under florescent lights,
which Helen R. Jones does not like
but tolerates anyway to keep her job. She knows
that she sometimes looks “off” in the
wrong kind of light.

Helen R. Jones eats breakfast in the
predictable, calming quiet of the house
which is only punctuated by a series of meows
that single the arrival of another hungry soul. She
rises from her seat at the breakfast table
and fills two bowls near the pantry door: one with
water, one with dry camel-colored kibble that
crunches nicely between the points of tiny feline
teeth. The lithe, lean-shouldered collection of
muscle and ochre-striped fur saunters to the bowl,
leans down, and crunches each little mouthful,
spilling a few little bits like broken asteroids
onto the kitchen floor.

Helen R. Jones does not always spend her mornings
amidst nearly unbroken quiet: some mornings
she talks to her little companion as she
fills the bowls with water and kibble. Some mornings
she sings as she washes the small contingent of
breakfast dishes before slinging her purse
over her shoulder, checking the lights, and locking
the door behind her. Every now and then a
large screaming scarlet dragon with a laddered back
and decorative white scales flies down her street
at high speeds: and Helen R. Jones
will cover her ears. When she was a little girl, she
used to flap her hands after the noise was
gone – but she learned to quiet her hands, to
quit making them scream.

Helen R. Jones has twenty books from the local library
sitting in a few small stacks on her coffee table: she
reads them on Sundays and Mondays. Helen R. Jones
has dreams about old Indians, dead poets, and legends
that most have committed to dust piles in
old mental attics. Helen R. Jones watches Star Trek
every Monday night, mostly because of LeVar Burton. And
Helen R. Jones files all of this away, under her brown skin
and blue – powder – housekeeper’s uniform. Because
today is Tuesday, and she must go to work.

Written 5/6/13
© 2013 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.
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This poem was written for We Write Poems Prompt #154: Who is Your Protagonist? Helen R. Jones is a character I created before in the “small steel town” series of poems, of which The Creek is part (however, The Creek is written in the voice of Rachel, a teenage girl). I intend to write part of the series in Helen’s POV, and I thought this might be a good place to start.

-Nicole
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The first, second, and third place winners in each category read their poems and attending poets were invited to read on the open mic. In addition to “A Zealot”, I also read “Candles”, the second poem I entered into the competition.

The winning poems were also included in an online chapbook published by Worthington Libraries.

I will be posting a video of my reading of “Candles” at the open mic soon.

-Nicole

Hear me, O Tree: we are cracked open, crackpot corvids
whose non-spangled black banners yet wave
over the land of the dusk and the home of the knave!
We are two – sonorous and audacious,
screeching in tongues that scrape velvet linings
from the insides of the ears of any listener within
a close radius of our home – and we beseech you
for that same hour of magic every night:
I, the Half-Impaired, and he, my partner in flight.

Those who consider us slack-jawed should
compare us with our jackdaw cousins and
marvel at the separation of perch and fate. We chose
you, O Tree. We live, we love, and we
create newer versions of ourselves inside your
wooden arms. When Ushas mounts her chariot,
we launch from your arms, gather our victuals,
and fly under the blazing daylight cast off from its
golden wheels. When Ratri calls us to roost, we
return to your own strong shoulders and marvel at
how feathers contrast with your white and yet blend
with the night. And when Shani climbs onto our backs
and urges us past the veil between flesh and spirit, we will
make off with pictures of you as stolen suns in our beaks.
I don’t think he will even know: we will tuck you
inside our jaws for safe keeping.

Written 4/19, 4/22, and 4/23/13
© 2013 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.
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This poem was written for We Write Poems Prompt #152: Animals. I chose a purplish-white sycamore tree and the raven as my animal (no surprise there). I’ve annotated this poem with a few Wikipedia articles to aid the reader.

-Nicole
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My feathers are black. Black like the sari night
that never bleeds anything but little lights
through the pinpricks of diamonds in the fabric. Black
like the ink that wears these words on its skin. Black
like half my roots. But I am not a crow, for I don’t
wick up cheap, useless drink into my gut. And
I don’t jump – I fly. I might wheel about, but that
requires whirling dervish skill to birth enough insanity
to chase away the vanity created by oppression,
unwritten rules, and minds that fail to bloom.

I know of yet another man with wings, another one
with a computer mind and a glass shatter heart. He stood
toe to toe with Jim Crow, flew against him in battle
on flame-drenched wings. He did it bare-fisted,
with knuckles like poems that smeared
Jim Crow feathers all over their lips and
cleaved asunder its written (and unwritten) rules
with incisors, molars, and canines carefully sharpened
for the task. He did it under the soft cornflower lights
of a New York City theater. He did it
behind soft-skinned microphones and with
songs once sung by those with scarred shoulders and
manacled wrists. He did it, even after
lightning delivered by machine and by prescription
convulsed his body. And he did it until his voice
became so ragged that he could no longer take flight.

Mr. Robeson, I hope that you will not
hold my choice of totem animal against me. The Raven
may be a thief by some accounts,
but He (or She) sometimes stole the needful to
then gift it to humankind – like the sun, which shines
on folk of all colors. I also chose Her because
I believe in flight – and the light by which I write
makes the inkiness of my feathers visible in black letters,
by which I form words and take wing. Like another
fictional brother – a starship captain named Sisko –
I believe in writing the story, even with my beak
upon walls if paper is denied me. Even if
flight is denied me, I will not choke on silence –
or my own feathers.

Written 2/26/13
© 2013 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.

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This poem was written for We Write Poems Prompt #144: In Your Own Words. After examining my own poems, I noticed several words. phrases, and themes jumped out at me, but I ended up choosing “wings” as my word. Being as one of my poetic personae is the “Half-Impaired Raven”, I thought this would be most appropriate.

Also, this poem relates to Paul Robeson, an African-American actor and singer who is probably best known for his leading role in Shakespeare’s play Othello. Robeson was a very talent individual who was also outspoken about political and social causes, including civil rights. He also was very vocal about his support of the USSR, which caused him to become blacklisted during the McCarthy era and to lose his passport. His films and albums were removed from public distribution in the 1950′s and he was no longer asked to perform in public. And to add insult to injury, his own alma mater Rutgers University removed a bust of him from its campus library. It was as if the man had virtually been erased from the mind of the public. Robeson fell into ill health in the 1960′s — by the time he would have been welcome again in the public eye, his voice had begun to fail.

Paul Robeson

Author Norm Ledgin proposes that Robeson was autistic — specifically, that he had Asperger Syndrome — in his book, Asperger’s and Self-Esteem: Insight and Hope Through Famous Role Models. I have encountered very few African-American autistics in my journeys, and I don’t think it’s for a lack of our existence. If Robeson was indeed an Aspie, he would have seen the world through different lenses — as I do, but with his own unique perspective and vision. All of this inspired me to begin writing a series on my Woman With Asperger’s blog, “The Souls of Black Autistic Folk” (the title is an homage to W.E.B. DuBois’ book, The Souls of Black Folk). I had intended to write the entire thing during the month of February, but I find that the sheer amount of material alone will necessitate me to continue this series until its logical conclusion.

A history note: you’ll notice in the poem I refer to a crow drinking cheap whiskey, jumping, and perhaps wheeling about. This is a reference to the etymology of the term “Jim Crow”, which comes from a  song from the 1800′s entitled “Jump Jim Crow” which became popular at minstrel shows in the 1800′s and 1900′s and was always performed in blackface. This being one of the ugliest parts of our cultural history, the song itself hearkens back to an also ugly practice of putting out whiskey-drenched corn to lure crows, which would eat it and then be unable to fly. While jumping and whirling about, the farmer would then club the crows to death. 

Also, you’ll note that I made a reference to a “starship captain named Sisko”. For those of you who aren’t Star Trek fans, I’d be happy to explain. Captain Benjamin Sisko was the commander of the Deep Space 9 space station in the Star Trek universe. The station itself was located near the entrance to am artificially created wormhole which allowed travel to another quadrant of our galaxy and near the planet of Bajor, which was formerly occupied by another race known as the Cardassians. The Bajorans revere the aliens living in the wormhole as deities and refer to them as “The Prophets”; they an ability to allow others to see visions through objects known as “Orbs”.  In the episode “Far Beyond the Stars”, Captain Sisko had an extended vision where he and the rest of his crew from DS9 were science fiction authors working for a sci-fi magazine in New York City during the 1950′s. In this vision, Sisko — now named Benny Russell — wrote the story of the space station for the magazine only to have the publisher refuse to run the entire issue in which it appeared because, in his estimation, no one would believe that “a Negro could be the commanding office of a space station”. In a subsequent vision in a later episode, Sisko  as Russell writes his story on the walls of the asylum to which he has been committed, as he has been denied writing implements and paper.

Captain Benjamin Sisko

It is a bit of an irony that I chose the word “wings” for another reason — Robeson’s theatrical debut after he graduated from law school was the Eugene O’Neil play All God’s Chillun Got Wings. The same title is also that of a African-American spiritual. And in the end, I do believe we all have wings and are capable of flight — if not physical, then mental, emotional, and spiritual.

-Nicole
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I am not dripping with innocence, but
I am missing files inside my brain. I didn’t know
that Hades could be a glass box,
and that rogue princes could slide in between
a frigid, translucent edge and a tarnished, gold platform
in order to slip in undetected, take fruit, and
leave. They didn’t take those pomegranate
seeds – else I would have awakened –
nor the cherry – Hades, wearing the mask of
a blonde British man, already took that while he was
looking for a green-card ace to slide up
his sleeve. No, they took blood oranges, passion fruit, and
the occasional tamarind from beneath
my tongue. And some days, I am rummaging
between the folds of my skirts or prying open
the red door behind a breastbone cage in order
to find more honeyed, seed-laden delights to pass along
to Prince Charming – who looks curiously so much
like Vishnu.

I am not blond. I never was. Blame
whoever you like – starry-eyed Italians trying to
resurrect me in lines of oil and canvas, or neo-pagans
who love symbols from deep elder forests, or
Mr. Disney – they all got it wrong. The good brothers
got the basic story right, but they forgot
about cycles, and returns to stygian kingdoms
I did not ask to reign over. The Morrigan
would dance in the sun: how else could her ravens
find sparkle to steal except by the light that singes midnight
to transform it into gold and azure? And so
I would rather bask in the song of daylight myself,
ripping off my underworld finery and
marching about the streets in sunshine
wrapped like dupattas around my valleys and hills
of skin. But like that old Emperor, I would still
be unclothed, shining the slim, shady amethyst jewel below
the fulcrum of my body where it could catch
twelve million rays of light, making the sun
blush at its very sight: and I hear that
the Universal Opera accepts gemstone tickets
of all kinds.

Oh, and one last thing: I am not a damsel in distress.
But I am thankful for Prince Charming.
So you may ask: why do I still sometimes awaken and
find myself stuck in this damned box? Maybe that’s
the other thing the good brothers got wrong. The
old Greek bards see me crawl back to the half-lit realms
once a year: maybe that explains this recurring nightmare. But
I can’t blame the brothers for writing me as free forever,
released by a slip of a tongue – or a cock, depending
on who they got their tale from first.

Love can break open locks and
pry open the mouths of manacles – but it didn’t bargain
on the beauty who keeps climbing back into the box
and wrapping somnolent air like blankets around her.
I suppose Vishnu – I mean, Prince Charming –
can keep cracking the glass open in manly heroic fashion:
but as much as he loves cycles, I’d rather not
lock him into this one. This time, I’ll be
busting open the glass. And I will never
eat pomegranate seeds or touch spinning wheels
again.

Written 2/11/13
© 2013 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.
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This poem was written for We Write Poems Prompt #142: Once Upon A Time. We were asked to write a poem from the point of view of a fairy tale character.

I chose to meld two women here: Sleeping Beauty and Persephone, making this potentially part of the Goddess Chronicles poems I started writing some time ago. Persephone made her first appearance in “Sky Drunk” and again in “Holes“, and I thought that it would be perfect to have her wearing the mask of Sleeping Beauty. Persephone has been classically identified, in my opinion, as a “damsel in distress” figure, rescued by either Zeus or Hecate (depending on whose version you read) and I wanted to turn this idea on its head by looking at her through the lens of another “damsel in distress”, Sleeping Beauty.

In my mind, Beauty seems to be a passive figure, waiting to be rescued by Prince Charming. Depending on whose version you read, the prince either awakens her with a kiss or has sex with her while she is sleeping (and this is not just from the pages of Anne Rice’s “Sleeping Beauty” novels — at least two other versions depict that the prince impregnates her in her sleep). What we are looking at here potentially is the idea that a woman must wait for a man to awaken and become knowledgeable of her own sexuality and womanhood — an idea that unfortunately I was taught growing up and what some young women are even being saddled with today.

Is this a feminist poem? Maybe. I have noticed tendencies in women to refrain from solving their own problems and waiting to be rescued. Heck, I’ve been guilty of it myself. While love does reach out to try to help the other person, I am realizing that we must be willing to aid in our own rescue — or even rescue ourselves sometimes — and not allow ourselves to return back to the tower, the dungeon, or the glass box.

Are fairy tales harmful? I’ll leave that for you, the reader, to decide. I think they can give us glimpses into the medieval mind or in some cases promote positive messages (I think Hans Christian Andersen probably is the best at this). However, the message in multiple fairy tales that a woman will be rescued by a handsome prince and “live happily ever after” is deceiving and does not reflect real life.

One last note: you’ll notice multiple elements in this poem. Besides merging Persephone and Sleeping Beauty, you see references to the good old Emperor with the new (non-existent) clothes, the Glass Coffin (another tale by the Brothers Grimm), and some inspiration by Tori Amos (anyone want to go see the Universal Opera?).

-Nicole
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