Nisha Bolsey :: Four poems

  

Half-Filled Cups of Water, Collecting Dust

I.

Five ft. rubber tree

balloons & shoes
& things 

the soap is running low again

it’s because I keep pumping the dispenser three, four times
concealing both palms completely in foam. 

I don’t remember the last time I wore jewelry on my wrists.

The glass bangles were purchased for a funeral
(actually, a celebration of life) 

at Deck the Neck on Devon

they were the cheapest ones they had—
the shop owner warned me that the glass is brittle, the sparkles will fall off, etc. 

I wrapped the full set in three little cloth pouches to take on the plane.
In the end, none of my family members complained 

that the bangles were silver
even though my choli was gold 

the sari itself was bright orange
and I was jealous of my brother 

his cream kurta with crimson salwaar
tall and with guitar 

singing Girl from Ipanema for our aunts & uncles

 

II.

Light coming from the east
still early 

the calendar says OCTOBER

shoes and coats form a semi-circle around the door
there are shoes for mud
shoes for water
shoes for asphalt 

(summer shoes are put away)

sometimes I get lost staring at a map.
I forget what I’m doing and minutes go by. 

I’m looking to see where that street leads
in relation to the water’s edge, or in relation to me. 

A few people have even shared their locations
with me, so I can see where they are
and estimate what they might be doing.
Mimi is at home, though, in reality,
the map puts her about a block down the street:
1,754 miles away. Dad is at home, too, it seems:
5,271 miles away. I can even zoom way out,
see how many finger flicks
until we’re all on the same screen
as three blinking blue dots. 

Paper & cloth masks
some pink
some patterned
some generic blue 

I remember going to New Orleans, where I got that print.
The one of a brown girl sitting on the horn of a crescent moon.
She’s me, I told everyone within reach.

  

 

the city

time swells & rusts from
the fire escape—watch the sun go down
& wind peel back the layers of the city
like stickers on a telephone pole.
the city as wind-up doll. the night train pulsing underground.
morning drizzle. puddles in every pothole.
the umbrellas running to catch the bus.
the thick omen of every sidewalk sprout.
the cranes that hover like birds of prey.
& city of barbeques. fresh strawberries on a picnic blanket.
the lines at the grocery store.
the rose-soaked sky west.
the wind tunnel between skyscrapers.
the way radiators seethe & winter
collects on sidewalks. city of slush.
icicles for fingertips. mittens as face mask.
the warmth of your own breath.
the train screeching to make the curve.
the empty station. yellow glare that punctures the night.
city of just got off work. the car alarm in the sunken hours of morning.
& downpour city.
the rain shaking out its hair.
the gutter lakes of shimmering pinks & greens.
the car that drives through & drenches.
the group that huddles under the viaduct.
the rain as curtains. the sun drawing them open.
the fire escape that rears toward the sun. 

 

march 5
 

these winter days slip into nights
like water draining from a sink. 

afternoons are translucent, flaunt
nothing. when the shadows began 

tonight, the departing sun left foam
draped over the back porch. no reds or purples 

were bled for their color—instead, steel-eyed
clouds begat the lusterless moon. we soaked 

in the grey, wandered its inner forest.
there, empty oaks flickered like wafers. 

these are evenings lived in film negatives. night 
rises like dough and day just crumples. gives way. 

 

You Can Write This 

after Laynie Browne

 

You can write this without the ghost resurfacing. You can slow down each word a little, cut off a few syllables and suddenly it’s a fig. Watch it grow large and ripen, and when it’s ready to eat you can taste the scent of wood-burning air. You can look at words like they’re little invitations, like prisms with gates opening to invite you to tea on a cold Chicago afternoon. Each letter a flower bulb, a chance of showers, a deadened leaf. You can take all this in a basket and bring it to your kitchen, bake it in cupcake pans. You can make words out of rising dough and eat the sound out of a cake.

You might decide not to do that, and to instead let the words and the eyes control you. It’s your choice, but beware the mixing of salt and woodpulp. You might fly all day only to realize you left your soul under the page. You might cry and realize suddenly you are out of salt—salt you needed for the rest of the journey. If you stray too far onto the page, you might squeeze the light out. It could go dark for hours when you needed to see those spaces between the trees. You can take language to the store and come back with something different every time: tacos. A soufflé. Yellow potatoes.

You can come back to it hours later and everything will be gone. In its place—wood shavings, wet sand. The waves you relied on to carry you are suddenly nowhere to be found.

You can make a mural out of a place in which you are only a visitor, perhaps always will be.
The trouble comes when trying to make a mural out of your own feet and hands. That’s when it may be necessary to write yourself some mittens.
You can write snow onto the page—

            as in insulation, as in falling crystals, as in imagined planets.

You can write this with hollowed out words. You can leave abandoned spaces in your metaphorical sky to illuminate the path. The path can have no streetlights, only rows of frosted grass. You can eschew metaphors—so literal that squeezing the text is like squeezing brick. Or you can overflow with peach juice, in the summer when supply is plentiful, so sweet you shiver at the final word.

You can write this with words pressed onto the notepad like a flower from three decades ago. You can expect the inevitable questions: To whom was the flower originally pinned? From where was it taken? When was it plucked, or stolen, or killed?

You can write this without words at all. You, only you, can name them one by one. You can see them take shape in the dark watercolor beneath your waking hours. You can pick them up, one by one, and see if they disappear.

 

Nisha Bolsey is writer and activist, as well as a current student in the poetry MFA program at Columbia College Chicago. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Tiger Moth Review, Columbia Poetry Review, LandLocked, and elsewhere.