Poetry by Nicole Brooks

                ​Timo Newton-Syms CC



Swan Lake



Snow. Our city a tableau inside a frosted globe. See the glittering 
puffed fronds of wisteria. A royal blue frost heralds the falling 
snow, ground cover of swan. Their feathery skirts bristle in cold air, rising 
feathers join the clouds. Awakening their limbs, rolling their
shoulders to ward off the chill, the dancers peel apart 
the rough layers of their skirts. The swans form their
opening, wrists crossed. A prayer to beginnings. Can you hear? Shoes
on the wood floor. The snow fall is a blanket out the window, hushing
the birds. They flock, necks crossed. Shoulder-to-shoulder, crossing
the room. Crossing their fingers, crossing the field. I cross
my heart and hope to die, the cygnets speak. Their words dissipate,
fade to wisps under the roll of trumpets, under the weight
of Tchaikovsky’s secrets, under the heft of Tchaikovsky’s genius.
The cygnets harbor a secret hatred. The young covet, while the old swans
are cruel. They don’t mean it. Let us listen for a kindness. Let us be
a bevy of birds listening, warm in a cave of snow. The harp 
begins. The violin joins in this crying. Rehearsal ends with a shedding 
of netted skirts. In their leaving, the lifting swans block the pale sky
in the window. To the north is tundra, and our world’s deepest lake. 





Better Homes & Gardens



I dig in my own yard grown-up that I am. Terrified
              of these unearthed roots with no business on this
planet. Like potato eyes those evil tuber stems on

              spuds rough and dusty in a crate in my grandmother’s
cellar. As a child I bent and rubbed those eyes until they broke
              free. Flicked them aside to die with the skin of onions

balling in their mesh bag. I’m pissed I didn’t listen
              to my grandma who I had for 28 years. In her garden I stabbed 
with a trowel where she pointed. Peeled clump from carrot and tossed

              the orange daggers in a bucket. Same bucket she used for fish guts. I’ve 
no guts a 40-something with a house built more than 120 goddamn years ago.
              I say goddamn because the soil is moldy and as much as I love

history this dirt is ashy death. Fuck it all that she’s not here
              that I can’t grow food that I am useless. I damn to hell the dead
animal likely a small rat in our kitchen wall out of reach and its taint 

              corpse. Fuck the raccoon family in their rotted-wood crawlspace 
cathedral and having to demolish drywall to replace with plastic a burst
              iron pipe casted in the Victorian era. While I’m at it

fuck those productive green-thumbs who ooh and ahh over rutabagas
              and find salvation in peapods and daylilies and
stars. Let them marvel at the worm in the apple in the orchard atop a mountain

              at the edge of the world. Grandma scales perch. With thin knife slices belly
of rubber white. She rinses the bucket clean fills it to show me the gutted
              gas bladder how it’s a bubble see how it floats. 

​​

Nicole Brooks is a writer and editor in Indiana. She’s had a long career in communications and is an MFA student at Butler University in Indianapolis, concentrating on poetry. She served as poetry editor of Booth. Her poems have appeared in Barren Magazine, Minola Review, The Indianapolis Review, and in the New Rivers Press book “Visiting Bob: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Bob Dylan.”

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