Australian
Poetry Journal

Issues / Volume 5 Issue 2 , November 2015

Poem

N

Ivy Alvarez

  nictate:
          winking                 my cousin’s boyfriend 
          lifted the bottle to his lips             then left
  
          I placed my lips to the opening        taste what was left behind
  
  nidificate, nidify: 
          gravid guinea pig
          scratches at the wood shavings 
          bares her teeth and tries to bite         when I offer water
  
          later, there is blood and squeakings 
          small, pink versions of her 
          a clutch of blind hunger
  
  nidor:
          garlic ginger onion frying in oil 
          a pang and my mouth                      fills with water 
          and my plate is as empty as I am
  
  nidus:
          eggs like shy white flags 
          ripen to parasites that itch the skin 
          stick their wicked needles in            suck and feed
  
  nigrescent: 
          at the world’s widest circumference 
          one minute’s sunset 
          is another minute’s pause for breath 
          and then             night
  
  nival:
          everything went white 
          my fingers                my lips 
          even my eyes went cold                   inside their lids 
  
  noctambulist: 
          I once walked out a sleeping house 
          to see the moon 
          trees tethered their shadows 
          and I was the only one that moved
  
  nodated:
          in the churchyard 
          a tree clad in bark        strange lumps       like fish
          trying to swim out 
          slowly
          through the years
  
  noddle:
          the culprit            don’t believe it
          is the one true perpetrator 
          neither heart nor the gut 
          not your spine or your spleen
  
          your hands are blameless 
  
          the culprit is this