Nikki Chapman ARHU 242

Rub your eyes Rub them hard enough That you see purple and yellow speckles form Like stars in the sky Contained within your skull Then lean your body Crane your neck till it's lined with your knees Then rip your arms away As chickens fall from your eyeballs Like hectic tears Bocking and bawking Hopping off of your thighs And plopping onto the ground Chest first, then jumping up with a start And walking along the floor Hopping around one who broke her foot on the fall To lay an egg The tiny birds Peck at your sneaker Like being poked at with the end of a pencil You stand up and hear a peep Look at the bottom of your shoe To see a chicken smeared As its comrades hustle and bustle And peck crumbs out of the carpeted floor

Swan Lake Pas de Deux We razor our legs smooth even when a nick raises blood like carbonated bubbles We spread hot wax Dripping between our eyes to rip away at our brows, even when it hurts We ignore our eyes watering We ignore our skin, pink and fresh, screaming We wonder if this pursuit of beauty blurs our aspirations If we see no future in getting older, why pursue anything else besides beauty? Why pursue anything else besides beauty? Why pursue anything else besides beauty? Sorry, no time to answer that question I need to get ready The bathroom turns into a warzone where women want for perfection They emerge from a porcelain tiled cocoon, shiny and smooth After germinating in a coating of self loathing All for an hour of partying and staring From a guy whose idea of getting ready Is waking up from his nap

A flash of blue, of blue, the blue, go through, Flashing, crashing, taxing Flash flash crash Blue flash, blue crash, blue blue Blue and the night The night and the blue Go do, go do Go do the blue to you Go take the night to you Go night, to blue, to white, go Protrude, protrude, protrude the blue Go the blue the blue protrude Protrude shroud blue Blue shroud, cloud, endowed, Takes on, takes on, blue on, takes on the on the on Go on the on Shroud of, of Shroud of rain, of rain, raid, rain away, ay Blue shroud rain Blue shroud Blue Rain Rain the blue the shroud

Every day, The house across the street stands, Its name engraved atop its gutters That are adorned with statues of black birds “The Raven House.” During childhood, I ask my parents who lives in that house They say its a group of old witches But I’ve never seen anyone walk in or out During winter, The plastic skeleton hangs in their yard Propped up against the snow-filled cauldron Wearing a santa hat During spring, The skeleton wears bunny ears The color of gaudy flamingoes To get into the Easter spirit During summer, I tell myself That the ghost I see peeking out of the attic is just a mannequin When I walk past the house on the way to the park During fall, The skeleton is at his prime His frontal bone perked up in eagerness Feeling the autumn air whistle through his ribs During October, I read in the newspaper about the witches across the street How visitors pay to sleep over for a séance But never st

Blackout Waking up to darkness, Feeling the black silence Until the vents shutter to life Sunlight Open the blinds The light sears into the buildings Reflecting onto my adjusting eyes Storm A flash of blue And the night takes on a shroud of rain Drizzle The streetlights reflect Onto a dark grey sky

"The image is the poet's pigment. The image is not an idea. It is a radiant node or cluster, a vortex through which and into which ideas are constantly rushing. It is as true for painting and sculpture as it is for poetry." To be honest, at first when I am figuring out where to put line breaks in my poem, I do it by number. I like having stanzas that are all the same amount of lines, or at least have a similar amount. I think this is because I'm someone who likes symmetry and organization. So sometimes I will plan the amount of lines I want in each stanza, and then plan out what I want to happen in each stanza. To me, each stanza is a complete thought. It's almost like writing a paragraph, only with poetry you can take the idea that you would write a paragraph about and shorten it into a succinct thought. I also find that it's interesting to use line breaks to keep a reader in suspense. Instead of finishing the thought completely, the stanza ends with a &q