ALYSSA NICKERSON // Check

Check

Sticks stammer over the fractured canvas
of city asphalt as crowds coalesce under
the spittle of sudden cloud-cover. Figures
shuffle in the screened circumference of
courts. Sport and candor muscle euphoria
into the storyline of Sunday’s drizzled afternoon.

Fogs encase New York City while a Russian
accomplice steals thunder from my lips,
transposes it skywards. I trade my wit 
for the kiss of dew-draped six-pack. I think
of the reactionary affect of last night’s 
collision of skin; I wonder if there might
have been recollections of pitch and penchant
in which I win out over melancholy.

Parallel memories sputter and fade, 
wading into future tensions. 

There are lessons in the aged
ensemble of oak and willow
and foxglove hums a poisoned
chord. Ink spills from the corners
of new maps, which are placed
between your teeth and soak 
your pillow with light as you sleep
away the maze of day and night.

---

Alyssa Nickerson is the product of wonder and wanderlust. She was born twenty-four years ago in Vancouver, British Columbia, and has since lived in New Zealand, Washington D.C., Chicago, and Colorado. She currently resides in Georgia, where she studies writing the Savannah College of Art and Design. Her work has previously been published in Word Riot, Poetry Quarterly, Camel Saloon (Editor's Choice), Eunoia Review, amphibi.us, Bone Orchard Poetics, Palimpsest Journal of the Humanities, and elsewhere.