Poems
Here are links to the poems of mine that have been published online:
Palm Sunday II
1
Go find, untie an ass.
The very stones cry out.
Strew palms along the path.Go beat the usurers out.
Go cast the temple down.
Three days and it’s rebuilt:but not you. Not you. You’re gone.
The braveheart women weep, and laugh.
The rain falls with the Gospel.
Christ is gone, the angel sings,
and the silver rain falls down.
sx Salon 7, 16 December 2011
One night, one cousin grew brave, and cruel.
There was a stick. There was a poke. The frog
crawled a little. Yet another poke. Then out came the pee!
A slender geyser, a watery arc. We screamed,
and all covered our eyes.
I heard once that for torture, the tyrants
of the world made their enemies
swallow live frogs. These frogs had twine
tied to their legs. They went down croaking
so the squawks you heard were the men’s
and the frogs.
the frogs you know are terrycloth green with piggyloves and microphones
the frogs you know dream on lily pads and crouch in grass and sit on stones
the frogs you know go swimming swimming all the time
eyes rippling water green as slimebut those are not our frogs
Visit the exhibition. Face the fear.
All about frogs. Frogs from everywhere.
Frogs in green water, hunkered like moss
on rocks, lurking under logs, under leaves,
and all behind glass.
Avatar Review XIII, Summer 2011
Ocean is spirit is secret is myth.
It is history, graveyard, remembrance. It’s cloth
of timelessness, mantle of memory, cloak
of iniquity.
The Magic Mirror Tempts Lily’s White Daughter (1951)
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A reading of “The Magic Mirror Tempts Lily’s White Daughter (1951)”, Mama Lily and the Dead (Poinciana Paper Press, 2010)
A blue hole swallows the unwary, offers up
its perfect mystery. A thousand feet from shore
a shelf dives undersea a thousand fathoms deep.
The North Side ridge looks down. The water’s stripes
bleed turquoise, blue, and indigo.
soulmama born she baby
in the treefrog nightsoulmama child he drown
he drownsoulmama fight she fight
……………………………………………………This is not
the secret blood that smirches thighs and seeps from wombs;
it’s scapegoat blood that quenches desert sands,
the serpent-on-a-stick that cures on sight.
This blood can heal when drawn from open wounds
by scourges, nails, Gesthemene’s dark night.
You danced him beautiful: Baron Samedi, Ghede, Papa Bones,
your top hat, your black cane, your tails
lifting and spinning, slick sweat on your chest
.
The Carpenter Seals Lily’s Widowhood (1943)
Lily checked the stove, the yard, the sky, and whispered back:
No fire here. But Eddie smiled. He knew the truth, and lacked
the words to tell it.
.
The Preacher Man Saves Lily’s Soul (1914)
Isaiah set they soul afire. Lily wake, clapping hymns
to the night. Her sister sigh out of sleeping,
the dark air all live-up with light.
.
The Carpenter Seals Lily’s Widowhood (1943)
Lily checked the stove, the yard, the sky, and whispered back:
No fire here. But Eddie smiled. He knew the truth, and lacked
the words to tell it.
Anti-, Featured Poet #14, October 2008
.
The Granddaughter Sings Lily Home (1994)
She sing a song of eye and hill and help
that come from God. The last aunt die
ten days before. Don’t tell her, it gn kill her—
but Melinda know that death don’t lie
in knowing: it in lying.
.
Life is a drying, a journey
from water to dust. The skin hangs,
the blood slows, flesh hardens and turnsto wire and stone.
qarrtsiluni, Transformation Issue, July-September 2008
.
The Carpenter Brings Lily Home (1924)
The blue wood snapped the white and made it glitter
in April’s sun. His mother baffled cakes,
whipped whites of egg and sugar into peaks,
dropped hard-earned almond essence into batter
and sang it into flavour.
The Barefoot Muse, Issue 7, Summer 2008
.
Sevenling: The Widow Addresses Her Late Husband
Without you, I’m a bell without a clapper,
a whistle without its pea,
a drum without a head.
The Avatar Review, Vol. 10, June 2008
.
Sevenling: Flying South for Winter
The Cambridge autumn glowed.
The maples dressed in gold.
The robins were all widowed.
.
Sevenling: Rock Star
Sevenling: You Dream
You dream of slips, slits, buttonholes,
an Atwood poem, an unhooked eye,
a big bed growing cold.
.
But Lily’s life, filed sharp by fate,
ripped that bright redemption.
Light scattered all around the yard.
The chickens pecked and clawed.
Shit Creek Review/II v.4 July 2007
.
The Scotsman Gives Lily her Name (1904)
He named her Lily, for her whiteness,
but her eyes held secrets, dark as lakes
that swallowed sons beneath their waves.
Calabash 2.2 Summer/Fall 2003 (.pdf document)
.
The Seamstress Teaches Lily How to Sew (1910)
Lily dropped the strays in tumbling heaps
on table corners and broken chairs, fiddled
them into piles. Naomi lit the lamp, picked a thimble,
sat Lily beside her, and patched scraps together.
By lamplight they stitched riddles of their own.
The Caribbean Writer Vol. 16 2001
[...] Nicolette Bethel was born and raised in Nassau, Bahamas, where she currently resides. She has lived, studied and worked in the UK and Canada, and is now apprenticed to the Government for her sins and others’. She is a playwright, a poet, a fiction writer and an anthropologist. She blogs as Scavella at scavella.wordpress.com, and links to her other online poems can be found here. [...]