Nicole Yurcaba, four poems

Reading The Fountainhead While Fishing The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody has decided not to see.—Ayn Rand another architect

blows

boulders

the rock’s weight shifts

sifting soil

the water Greco-Roman

murderous copy

of what

came

before

They Said Our Friendship Couldn’t I. Joachim Witt & Peter Heppner Tom Petty & Heartbreaker Bettie Page & Playboy Black & Leather Gibbs & Abby & Ducky II. (someone’s removing the Bob Seger CD from the stereo) (someone’s shredding our Bettie Page stationery) (someone’s using “special methods") (I, too, remember Stalin’s Reign of Terror) (someone’s blacklisting our names) (someone’s demolishing your Wagner and Prokofiev albums) (You, too, feast upon “Ritt der Walkuren” and “Dance of the Knights”) (shhh, I hear them coming; they’ll destroy us if we let them) (shhh, shut up. I won’t give them information) III. outside the bar from a corner telephone booth somewhere someone snaps black-and-white photos. we exit passing change between us.

Slave to the Metal To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. Like me who have no love…--Tennyson two Tennyson lines purple gothic script her creamy shoulder an auburn curl sweeping a corset’s bridling

Under a Sex Pistols Sky quarter after eight words from exhaustion pen strokes that were sewer lines arrogant and rude i wander the end a hotel room one night i am left

Nicole Yurcaba is a Ukrainian-American writer, an internationally-recognized poet, and an English instructor at Bridgewater College. She has been published in venues such as The Atlanta Review, The Bluestone Review, Philomathean, Midway. Still, The Tishman Review, VoxPoetica, and many others. Yurcaba is also the 2nd place winner of Australia's Sans Frontieres Hemingway Contest and a finalist for Salem College's International Poetry Rita Dove Award.