Poems by Nicole Sellers
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Ode to my axial skeleton
i Now suspend me on earth, you jeweled chandelier, triple-wrapped in myelin tape. Vertical synapses blaze your trapeze, so I climb kundalini, ribbon-dance down the drapes. Voluptuous discs pillow my falls. Your turret sentry twists atlas facets toward my hyoid-anchored voice. My bloodthirsty queen reclines behind your sternum shield. Costal swashbucklers hoist my diaphragm parachute at the ready. Young osteoblasts scaffold my jigsaw viscera. In your thorax chapel deep trees bloom alveoli foliage. Iliopsoases flex as I gallop, cauda equina streams unplaited, fulcrum sacrum turns with the moon, precise coccyx props pillars. All this rigging, your ironclad clockwork. ii Then return me to earth. Unravel every fascia veil. Drop from me your diamond crown. Your arrowhead coccyx sinks in a new desert womb. Double-edged ilia embed in sand like shipwreck rudders. Cocoons fill these ischial loops. Blue butterflies burst my navel, my entrails sundried spoils for ant armies that carve catacombs in marrow, a superhighway out of your vertebral canal. Transverse processes become gecko rungs. Your xiphoid dolmen caps a trap door spider. Half your ribcage incubates asps in spring. This map-scribbled skull speaks my era, mechanistic, honed. Seashell-clean nasal conchae sigh over your fallen drawbridge mandible. Your teeth fence wasps’ nests. Auditory ossicles tap quiet codes. Your orbits split to flint, fit to spark sunrise in a shaman’s lamp. Sun coat Chain mail mantle Warm amber lining Cuffs glint gold leaf Flight feather sleeves Heavy yet weightless Quartz crystal genome Double spun passwords Sleek chameleon skin True north horsepower Pockets bloom quinces Antique mirrored hood Selective razor wire Filters dew from poison Rainproof honeycomb Seed pearl furrowed Red fox fur folds Silk sighs stride rhythm Hem strikes night sparks Flames enemy arrows Holds ancestral light |
Nicole Sellers was born in the USA during the Summer of Love. At age eight she immigrated to Sydney, Australia. She studied creative writing and English literature at Wollongong and NSW universities. While raising children she earned her living as a tarot and palm reader, and continued writing poetry. Later, she acquired qualifications in complementary medicine. Nicole now practices naturopathy, teaches yoga, and writes poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. Her poems have appeared in the journals Scarp, Silver Cord, Emerald Egg, Crossroads, Watermark, and Plumwood Mountain, and in the anthology Grieve 6. To find out more about her work, visit https://www.nicolerainsellers.com/.
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