The following are excerpts from From the Poplars, the latest book of poetry by Cecily Nicholson, which has recently arrived from the press (order yours today!). These excerpts also appear in the forthcoming publication, Poems by Sunday, a quarterly art and poetry magazine out of Brooklyn, New York, edited by Daniel Owen of Ugly Duckling Press. It is hand-typed and mimeographed by hand with a limited print run (and hence is not available online).
Poplar Island pop patri individuated alike
lazaretto
Kamau Taurua, North Brother,
Angel our current
worse conditions of confinement
subjects of capture
property in the strictest sense
bound in a given moment
called to ground
unitary in the midst scattered
breathing
this next while a kind of evolution
stratifying dialects
from a strict sense of words
formal markers for ship makers
soluble paper ever sad
phonetic social generations and forth
demonstration parcels bought and sold repeatedly
as the record shows stolen
light comes up over the southeast bridges
normative, quieted
that a place told you it was bleeding into the snow
cold seeps to bone
born and cut with no language to remember
storage pits, caches, the hanging lots for crows
as land sounds lean into sleet
cottonwood trees
in the dark of winter growing tips “see” light
causing seedlings to bend toward the source
whiles before people disposed in a hundred-dollar hospital
corporeal lessons lean toward shared logics and finer beats
for the old lamps to show the whips still stuck
after centuries in the old wounds
pages to an opposite shore
to earth beneath here
an “I” on pavement or other words over
centuries of rotting matter
so sanctuary monoglot accent
island passed back into non-standard
trees suffer catenary curves of ivy and gossamer
signal lines tremble
sway and song put to order; to archive under English cloak
listening horizons burst new density this time
an I wants to pull a part as well
words light rain
romancing words composed upon a bridge
in the smokeless air
from the sky bridge
in the golden dawn pouring over wakening condos
o’r supplanted industry
routes you give in strings and I take as ligaments
called to the surface revolution a minimal surface
the most minimal surface other than the plane
a bloom
a smile curved up into sepals awn-like petals
past the parapet widening to the throat
lingual bone thumbed to spine
riparian causeway to ocean
audible integrity bending moments cable-stayed