Rooftop Poetry Club - Nikki Carroll

Nikki Carroll

Bio:
Born and raised in Cheektowaga, NY, Nikki Carroll plans to stay in the Buffalo area as a high school English teacher and eventually become a writing professor. She received her B.A. in English with minors in writing and art from Ithaca College and, after a period of time at her current job as coordinator for a youth emergency shelter / independent living skills program, she has returned to school at Buffalo State for her 7-12 teaching certification. Nikki loves making and admiring artwork, listening to all types of music, playing guitar and learning djembe, and especially writing poetry as well as creative nonfiction. Two of her poems have been published in the Buffalo News.

Poems:

war is not about that

they say this war is about
power and money and numbers
and freedom and ballot boxes

but war is not about that.

it is about skin and cloth and bone,
and how they tear under metal,
and whether it matters.

the faith of isaac

the dusty heels of my father lift and
lower in front of my eyes
disappearing in an even tempo under the hem of his robe
then reappearing cracked and leather-bound
always a little higher on the mountainside

faltering on an unstable route
i watch those familiar soles with adoration

i do not know that the knife handle imprints so deeply
into his palm
and he does not know that the bundle of fire-sticks scratches pink
into the insides of my elbows

we are two breathing creatures instead of three
and as we rise on stones
i climb to the rhythm of an absent lamb
and my father's silence

countertops

metal sun,
aluminum moon,
sand filling cracks
hiding a house
where love was.
where love banged on countertops
fists and wooden spoons, hollered,
hastening the protection of
bedroom doors like
fortresses.
shelter from our crimes
sheltering her from explosions of sobs.
because we knew what those countertops
should have been.
and we pitied them.

out of the damp

out of the damp of womb
our wrinkles do not stay,
puckered skin smoothes into talcum as we're
held under hospital lights to dry,
doctor's fingers like clothespins on ankles.

years of swimming pools and toy-filled baths
stored inside pink skin
begin to invade like slow flood,
turn over years, laundry, washing
and bathing baby hair, johnson & johnson shampoo
in kitchen sinks.
we soak in sweat of lovers' beds
where wrinkled bodies are first imagined,
and towel off sunblocked tummies, half-slicked cowlicks
at beach, drench so so many summer gardens
when sun almost sets.
tea swallows, infuses so many three o'clocks and
rain balloons, ruins grown-up shoes.

then, talcum dusted off an age ago,
steeped in baptism, skin grown thin,
cellophane membrane creases like newspaper on pavement,
exquisite undrying.
we immerse from inside.
other hands bathe us.
wrinkled.
again.

snapshot of a storm

my brain is a city in pictures,
sacred and overlapping,
reading a whole from the bones
of a storm.
a path - cumulonimbus forgetting blue -
is wrapped in a blanket,
on a lawn chair,
bare feet like strawberries in cotton.
grass wet.