Notes from the Commonwealth
Although I am on a diet from death
I am that abandoned warehouse
next to the farm and all the leftover inventory.
I am the broken hands and broken heads
working at the Lindt Chocolate Factory.
I am stuck in traffic.
I am the fake gold chain
hanging around my brother’s neck
and I am an unanswered phone call.
I am a long drive on Route 81
and all the cows in the field
that breathe car exhaust.
I am chewing through an electric fence.
Meanwhile, a beating heart breaks
into my house and the neighbors think I am dead.
This selection comes from the book, The Book of Dirt, available from NYQ Books. Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Nilsa Rivera.
Nicole Santalucia is the author of Because I Did Not Die (Bordighera Press) and Spoiled Meat (Headmistress Press). She is a recipient of the Charlotte Mew Chapbook Prize and the Edna St. Vincent Millay Poetry Prize. Her non-fiction and poetry have appeared in publications such as The Best American Poetry 2019, The Cincinnati Review, TINGE, Zócalo Public Square, The Seventh Wave, Gertrude, Flyway: Journal of Writing & Environment, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. Santalucia teaches at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania and has taught poetry workshops in the Cumberland County Prison, Shippensburg Public Library, Boys & Girls Clubs, and nursing homes. She lives in conservative-small-town Pennsylvania with her wife.
Nilsa Rivera writes about gender and diversity issues. Nilsa Rivera’s the Managing Editor of The Wardrobe for Sundress Publications. Her work appeared in the Huffington Post, 50 GS Magazine, Six Hens Literary Journal, Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies, and Selkie Literary Magazine. She lives in Riverview, Florida with her multi-species family.
- The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Othered by Seher Hashmi - April 19, 2024
- The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Othered by Seher Hashmi - April 18, 2024
- The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Othered by Seher Hashmi - April 17, 2024