Poetry by Jess Nieberg

I LISTENED TO YOUR SONG LAST NIGHT
for Cole

good days
crescendo and then melt
your memory

bad days
off key strings
drive me to your house

no one is home

i don’t think your ghost
would have lived here

i like to look anyways





3:11 AM ON A MONDAY
for Cole

let’s go for a walk
meet me at the corner
where small veins
become mainline

i will wait by the
stop sign and
pretend it was you

​



FUCK HEROIN
for Kayla

another building burned down today
they will put a headstone in its place
all the lights were on but no one knew it was burning
this is the second time this year

they say they will build more lighthouses
curb rocky shores
but here in this concrete jungle we are landlocked
the rescue boats seem just as helpless

queen city wears a crown
that is slowly crumbling

the buildings keep burning
from the same damn kerosene
it pumps through the veins of this place

​


GASLIGHT

i fell in love with you in a parking lot
full of windshields waiting to be broken
the way bomb shelters are built
anticipating the possibility of
and hoping for the best anyways

you were suffocating
without ever having to put
your hands around my neck

i fell in love with you in your
mom’s car after midnight
desperate and searching for savior
the way darkness will tempt
to any nearby light
no matter how red

you loved like invisible chains
liked to tell me you never tied
me into bedroom submission
just trickled down my throat
sticky sweet guilty until i
found myself choking on apology
in the form of naked body
offering the only way i knew how

i spent three and a half years
traveling between equator and the poles
i have never felt frostbite melt
so quickly before burning off every layer
of skin/ i never want to be touched again

your love felt just like a panic attack
every wall closing on the room of me
you blocking the only door
misery does love company
or trauma loves to re-traumatize
or gaslight loves to keep burning
long after you have extinguished the flame
you always liked to ask me why i didn’t leave
but the door handle was so hot
everyone knows you don’t just walk out of a fire
without wanting to go back
for all that is burning

​

Bio: Jess Nieberg is a poet and student living in Denver, CO. She is receiving her BA in neuroscience at the University of Colorado. She is a member of the 2017 Denver Mercury poetry slam team and was a finalist for the Denver Youth Poet Laureate. Her work is forthcoming in the Mutiny Info Reader, Bottlecap Press' blog, and Better Than Starbucks Poetry Magazine. Her favorite sound is laughter, she enjoys green tea and the color green a little too much, and would very much like to pet your dog.

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