Guest Poet Nicole Nguyen
UNTITLED
Sleeplessly at night
I still think of them
but mostly her.
Sadly, broken, desperate
overwhelmed at being haunted,
but I know
I will never see any of them again
yet faithfully I still mourn for her.
I can only remember her first name
still no one live nor dead
could ever have her name,
Bernadette.
I felt her, then I saw her.
Fingers curled
desperately clinging to the schoolyard fence-
the swells of tears threatening
to break her trembling crooked smile.
Like the sounds and sights
of a slow moving picture,
she released the fence
as she collapsed into me and held me
completely, with eveything
which was Bernadette.
I felt so betrayed
but never by her.
As I hid inside Bernadette,
hoping to leave some traces of myself
she left something, too.
That day as she walked away
I watched with a profound sense of loss.
That's how I remembered her.
That's how I remember her.
That's how it plays in my mind.
My Bernadette.
October 1997
Nicole Nguyen's Questions:
1) My grammer is not up to par so how can I make the dramatical pauses I hear in my head, but not necessarily on paper?
2) I try to place as much images in as little words as possible, any
tips?
Correspond with Nicole Nguyen at
calasia@vinet.com
with your ideas about this poem.
Jane's String
She lives her life
inside her mind,
some dark secret corner
much safer than your world or mine.
Her eyes just stare blankly
beyond what we could ever comprehend.
When all else fails,
Jane always knows a way
to let all the pain bleed
as she watches herself disappear.
Locked doors,
barred windows
and padded walls,
so high on drugs
she could just fly, fly, fly.
Sitting all alone,
talking to herself-
well, why the hell not...
nobody else will.
Sometimes at night
when she holds herself and weeps,
being both mother and child,
she survives only by a string,
a single thread of sanity.
But little do they know
that Jane got the last laugh
for when they slept soundly that night,
spared of all the demons
that they've created for her,
she drained all her pain
and smiled with triumph,
bathed in red,
as she broke her last string.
October 1997
Nicole Nguyen's Questions:
1) Although I am no advocate of suicide, I kept finding the poem leading
there. I want to express her utter desperation and lonliness without it
resorting to loss of hope. Other than the beginning, is there any moment in
my incredibly brief poem where you felt I could have pulled off saving her
without jeopardizing the dark feel of the poem?
2) Did you prefer the tragic ending or would you have found a more "light"
ending better servicing to the overall poem?
Correspond with Nicole Nguyen at
calasia@vinet.com
with your ideas about this poem.
The Albany Poetry Workshop