Tell Me How You Understand Vanishing Point

When we folded / the asphodels away / Prussian blue eggshells / aching rose thorns
labeled saintly ephemera / when we’ve cataloged / violet gloam birds / when we
surrender our honeymoon/ now he’s inside my body & now what. / We don’t recall
/ the future. We learn / to escape the body / scented heartbeat tangerine / in collar
bones. I wish I could stay / this young / owl on bruised stars, / in a city on the sea /
bathing my body, you / know the heart’s great works / forgiving the need to be happy /
/ intimate hibiscus, weeping / this mouth lost / in chartreuse. / Our dead rabbit’s / fur
dusted behind the couch, / children’s teeth hidden / in my drawer. I / hear, Oh
mama. A river gushes. / I let it. If you / return to this room / inside me, I’ll wait.
Canopy of cherries / at the beginning / of a decorous century. / Here, we stay young.
/ We turn the calendar / to sunflower season’s / brief stand, shadow / on the universe’s
lip. Log church / glittering in a shower / of hail. A pig / dies once. / We die over &
again, long before / it happens. It’s taken / this long to see / how lavish this unlimited
/ now. The escape / backward homeless plunge / off the balcony / red nightdress
floating /the Earth a delight / we remember fondly / in the next world.

Nicole Rollender was a 2017 NJ Council on the Arts poetry fellow. She is the author of the poetry collection, Louder Than Everything You Love (Five Oaks Press), and four poetry chapbooks. Nicole has won poetry prizes from Palette Poetry, Gigantic Sequins, CALYX Journal and Ruminate Magazine. Her work appears in Alaska Quarterly Review, Best New Poets, The Journal, and Ninth Letter, among many other journals. Nicole is managing editor of THRUSH Poetry Journal, and holds an MFA from the Pennsylvania State University. She’s also co-founder and CEO of Strand Writing Services.