Nicole Rollender

Light Work 

Mother doesn’t eat                                                  meat on Fridays
and prods me to pray                                              to the saint of the day.

Sweet Fiacre shelters                                               souls who shiver in tubs
from syphilis and bone                                            collapse, while Gertrude

kisses the cheeks                                                      of men who fear mice,
fingers tapping out                                                  humble songs

on window panes.                                                   You can learn
to unstitch                                                                people who eat

secrets. Lean in.                                                        Snuffing yourself
out is wrong, mother                                               says, but Apollonia –

who cast her chaste                                                  body into flame, a holy
escape from rape                                                      after a man hammered

out her teeth – entered                                            the canon, her necklace
of gold bicuspids pulls                                             souls closer. God, once

I believed in prayer                                                  bone’s steady gnaws
and groans, the way                                                 a collection of virgins

jumped into the sea,                                                drowning before rape
(the body is failing out)                                              to open luminous eyes

into paradise.                                                           The work of light
is God’s burden:                                                       light workers

alight on lit bone,                                                    now getting lost
in the trees                                                               except for bone-light

guiding bitten skin                                                  wounded wings
light in cups                                                             the saints go searching

lit torches, fireflies                                                    buckets of stars
night songs, bones’                                                   light, my skull eats

fire light, at last.                                                        Mother, I’m hiding.
I don’t                                                                       come home.




Nicole Rollender is the author of the poetry chapbooks Absence of Stars (forthcoming, dancing girl press & studio), Little Deaths (forthcoming, ELJ Publications) and Arrangement of Desire. She’s the recipient of CALYX Journal’s 2014 Lois Cranston Memorial Prize, the 2012 Princemere JournalPoetry Prize, and Ruminate Magazine’s 2012 Janet B. McCabe Poetry Prize for her Pushcart Prize-nominated poem “Necessary Work,” chosen by Li-Young Lee. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Adroit Journal, Alaska Quarterly Review, Creative Nonfiction, MiPOesias, Radar Poetry and THRUSH Poetry Journal, among others. She received her MFA from The Pennsylvania State University, and serves as media director for Minerva Rising Literary Journal and editor of Stitches Magazine. Visit her online at www.nicolerollender.com




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