Growing up in New Hampshire,
my dentist was also a taxidermist.
Living with loons,
his office paraded itself
with mounts. Glass-eyed deer
and coyotes in the motion of killing.
Stuck there, they hunger
forever, and we salivate,
listless and continual.
I want to be a statue
of something really interesting
(but I can’t say what)
and I want to die by being eaten.
It makes sense to become
minuscule and static;
to become a perfect version of
something else.
Hermes on the Beach
To every girl I’ve ever known
Here, where streams
jetty through old-rock sand,
waves dance with me.
I’ll wrap each of you
in bulrush from the high marsh
and we’ll walk backwards
into the rotted hull
of a half-sunk schooner,
in the low tides;
becoming the trail markers
to everything I’ve ever said
out of the side of my mouth.
But I can sing for You.
Or say the things I’ve
rehearsed with the others,
would You even know?
Know where to cast
lightning and anxiety?
My mom says I’m good, so
I’m good, right? Good at
knowing what it is to think
and talk good and fine.
Good at getting away
with being alone. And when
we’re lying, opened-eyed,
surveying the dark above us,
I’ll wonder what You’re dreaming.
Two Scenes From Prague
I. Berlin to Prague
A mother and daughter
braid each other’s hair
in our shared cabin.
I pretend my German
out the window.
Old men drink
on hillsides lining the tracks;
watching the river on
the other side of me.
Cracked-rock cliffs and
smolder patches in the grass;
Babička hobbling ruinous
train platforms;
Yellow flowers finding homes
in the black sides of the still river:
II. In Prague
I imagine myself dying,
being run over by a
tram; a certain kind of
planned absurdity.
When I wash myself,
I lay in the curtainless tub,
with the spigot in my hand,
my body close to me.
Nicodemus Nicoludis is an MFA candidate at Sarah Lawrence College and the poetry editor of LUMINA. He has worked as a janitor, a dish-washer and is currently starting the online journal World War 3. Someday he hopes to live near the ocean with a cat to call his own. You can find him on tumblr and twitter.