spiralsinshadows

[spiralsinshadows]

I grow in cracked clapboard

doll houses

where eternities blink by

like mosquito zappers

like ‘come home’ porch lights

my face peers

reflected in the raccoon’s eye

up up up I go

where the dust

kisses the sky

—Nikola Sojka

[spiralsinshadows]

Cotton candy skies

Melt across my tongue

Above on the telephone lines

Static weeps on phone calls hung

— Nikola Sojka

[spiralsinshadows]

There’s a garden

where statues wilt

with pools of sapphire

with flowers in silt

where I’ve ambled

where I’ve rooted

Where’s my heart gone?

It grows there still

—Nikola Sojka

[spiralsinshadows]

The hymn of the valley rattles through my bones

—a harmony of ladybugs and horse hooves—

Here where the scent of hay is all anyone owns

And the sun beams on all of us disparate youths

—Nikola Sojka

[spiralsinshadows]

Rebirth

Is a sigh tangling

with spring

a hum on the breeze

the scratch of rock

the itch to sing

the tart twin bursts

of our youth in smoke

and elderberries

—Nikola Sojka

[spiralsinshadows]

Acquaintance

I am familiar with the wind

the way it shivers my name

and with the pine

with the loam

the man, the worm

I am family with the valley

sap thicker than blood

where the roots are lungs

and to breathe

is to touch

— Nikola Sojka

[spiralsinshadows]

Shades

Purple descends into this valley

it climbs over crags

slants across ridges

it creeps deliciously into this dell

until all I breathe is lavender

until the clouds close like curtains

until the sky melts violet

and kisses the grasses goodnight

—Nikola Sojka

[spiralsinshadows]

June-eyed

My pupils are sunspots

and ladybirds

the whites not white

but bloodshot

and pressed-flower-tired

I want tulip vision

I want caterpillar cataracts

I want a brain botanical

all or none

or none at all

—Nikola Sojka

[spiralsinshadows]

Breathe with me

and become an essay unsaid

the stars are calling

the moon is lonely

with the wound you left it

—sure to leave a star—

but how splendid

to live in the clouds

won’t you wonder with me

about the things that aren’t said aloud?

—Nikola Sojka

[spiralsinshadows]

I’m a twitch of a woman

a slash as a smile

as cruel and unusual

as hope on trial

—Nikola Sojka

[spiralsinshadows]

We’re champions of midnight toasts

and lightning bugs

sparking bubbles, speckled globes

from coast-to-coast

we’re winged and dawning

becoming stories, becoming odes

—Nikola Sojka

[spiralsinshadows]

I stretch through broad afternoons

tap, tap, tapping on tomorrows

April pressures

and I persist

I’ll get there sooner

with my head sun-kissed

—Nikola Sojka

[spiralsinshadows]

I have been haunted by a stranger’s glance

and lulled by a language

I’ll never understand,

never forget

a blue eye, a copper smile

a ladybug between clapboard slats

castles sprouted from

twists in my mind, dirt within

as I’m dealt the cards

of the roving-dancing phantom

—Nikola Sojka

[spiralsinshadows]

Trains, like risks, are meant

To Be Taken

what is a path

but a chance

a window to lives

a call to aching

a road to new souls, new loves, new desperations

and it’s all so precious

so wondrous

to bear witness

to have a ticket

—Nikola Sojka

[spiralsinshadows]

Nikola Sojka

[spiralsinshadows]

I’ve made breaking

a meditation

like counting fallen leaves

like picking poppies

like chewing old toffee

until the flavour’s gone

but it’s sticky

and it sticks to me

—Nikola Sojka

[spiralsinshadows]

Sunset wears an apron of clouds

with april rains in her pockets

she leans over

a clever slant to her neck

with thimbles on her thumbs

she’s sewing daydreams into my head

—Nikola Sojka