Nicole Borello

Skinny in the Real World

I stand stripped and bony in a fedora slant
waiting for starved wrists to expand and burst.

My legs of gauze spin garter blue, wishing
for altered ankles thick with sugarcane.

I gorge on myself and then vomit my spine.
Too fat for TV. Too bony for the real world.



Assault

Your infant flesh tainted by the real world.
Scarred by discontinued placenta. There
is a thread basting you, turning you jaundiced
yellow. Surrounded by rags and scabs,
you fight to get the last drop of spoiled
sugar milk. A ball of cotton. A mesh
of embroidery. Pushing your tiny
wrists through a hurricane of billowing
baby quilts. Salt scrapes and a shoebox
coffin await you. Slowly splintering you.




Deflowered

Some sold. Some tossed from the ship
like plum pits. Pale skin cracking
in the sun. Peach blossoms turned crimson

crust. Melon bellies melting like paraffin.
Hung upside down, their bodies pummeled
by a bone-white hand. Praying through fingers

turned flour. Ebony stalks forced into ivory
slots to make perfect mulatto crops. Gnats
stuck to their buttermilk thighs, choking on cream.



Nicole Borello was born in Pittsburgh, PA and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area where she still resides. Her first full-length book of poems "So What If I Bleed," was a finalist in both the International Book Awards and the USA "Best Books" Award. Her first chapbook, Fried Fish and Breast Milk will be published in July by Dancing Girl Press.
 

Current Issue:
June 2012

Kendall A. Bell
Nicole Borello
Robert Demaree
Carol Lynn Grellas
Bronwyn Haynes
Karen Kelsay
Timothy Pilgrim
Robert Lavett Smith

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