Nickole Brown, “What I Did, II”

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In the squealing creak
of a yellow school bus
I made baby feet
in the morning fog windows,
the side of my fists and ten
thumbprints down.

I wiped them away, breathed on the glass,
made others

with higher arches, rounder heels,
perfect going-to-market toes.
I wiped those away, breathed on the glass,
tried again, then wiped, breathed,
tried again,
tried again.

From Sister, a “novel-in-poems” that’s also a debut collection. I first met Nickole in her capacity as the marketing director for Sarabande Books, but of course this is a completely different side to her creative passions. It’s a cliché to saw that poems dealing with an emotionally traumatic past are “raw,” and in this case it would be particularly inappropriate—this burst of expression has clearly been burning within Nickole for some time, and we’re the ones who are lucky that she’s brought it out of the kiln.

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2 January 2008 | poetry |

Laurel Snyder, “Paper Dolls”

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This is the shape of some words,
but not just.

This resembles the story
of a girl, but not just.

This is called
making it daily.

Go ahead. Take scissors,

and with a snip, make a girl.

Might as well make many.
They’ll all look alike,

but some will hold fewer hands
than others.

You’ll see what I mean,
but not just.

Make a flurry
of paper bits that won’t

seem to end, and what else
might you have made?

From The Myth of the Simple Machines. I’ve known Laurel Snyder for a few years now, first through email and then in person when she was promoting Half-Life, the anthology of essays she edited about growing up in interfaith families. Right now, she’s getting ready for Random House to publish Up & Down the Scratchy Mountain, her first novel for young readers, and as part of the buildup to that, she’s participating in the Class of 2K8, which makes her a perfect choice to start off a new year of Beatrice posts, right?

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1 January 2008 | poetry |

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