Three Poems

by Josh Nicolaisen

Dancing in the Kitchen to Guy Clark’s “Dublin Blues”

Twirling in circles, I hold you
high up aloft like a seedling
in the wind, a star, a starling.

          Darling, when I belt out, I’ll Love you
          ‘til I Die, and you, understanding ‘til
          to mean when, tell me, That’s right, Dad.

So much we can love each other
from Heaven, even
when we’re skeletons.

          I don’t know when you or I will be
          soil and memory. I want you to know now
          how much even my bones love you.

Not All Heroes Wear Capes

     for Ben Brackett

But you did
          the afternoon we climbed
Whitney Gilman Ridge
          and it was too cold
to be scaling Cannon’s
          cliffs without a jacket,

but you did.
          It wasn’t so much a cape
as our rope bag transformed
          into cape. Later, we laughed so hard
counting our falls, four heads,
          zero lights to fight the thick night.

Not all legends get viral
          memes made for them
but you did.
          Multiple. Paddle-guitaring
a shark through water or a vertical raft
          through lava,

your grin in stark contrast
         to both the terrified faces
of your guests and the teeth of the shark.
         You were generally the biggest jerk
at Jerkfest, where your reckless
         performance was always admirable.

You were the first dude
          in college who asked me to join
a group project. I think
          about you when I hear
Hot Rod Circuit
          because we both had their t-shirt.

Sometimes in the mountains I hear
          Dead Flowers, Rolling Stones,
the end of The Big Lebowski, all of us
          drinking and singing after
your funeral. What makes a man
          a hero?

Call it a ballad. Call it an elegy.
          I think you’d call it an ode, an echo

of how snow can crush and suffocate
         just seconds after it looked
so beautiful, so bright.
          So falsely still. So falsely light.

Requests of Time from an Aging Punk

I’m not trying to fight
your current. That would be silly.
I’m here to dance
the full circle, to beg. Oh, please
put me back in the pit
where I feel at home being pushed
around. I feel at home in a whirlpool
of angst, where high alert is requisite.
I want the hot sweat of strangers
smeared on me. Let me eat
the skanker’s dust. Let me feel
the pressure of someone else’s studs
being pressed against my skin. Let the pounding
commence, the double bass and the power
cords. Let me extend a hand
to the fallen. Let me do just one good thing
today, even if it’s small
and easy. I just want to know I can hold
my own. I want to be hit just hard enough
to sing some life back into me.

Josh Nicolaisen lives in New Hampshire and teaches writing at Plymouth State University. He holds an MFA from Randolph College and is a Pushcart Prize nominee. He has been awarded a grant from Bread Loaf Environmental Writers Conference and a fellowship from Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. His work has appeared in Colorado Review, Hunger Mountain Review, So It Goes, Appalachian Review, Four Way Review, Bellingham Review, and elsewhere. Find him at www.oldmangardening.com/poetry

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