Nicholas Skaldetvind is an Italian-American poet and papermaker. He holds an M.A. in English from Stockholm University, having written his dissertation on the spontaneous poetics of Jack Kerouac’s letters. As a merit scholar, Nicholas studied poetry at Left Margin LIT and at Naropa’s Summer Writing Program. His debut chapbook of verse was published in 2021.
WAITING
after Beth Stahlecker
What can I do? Wish the day over like macular clouds
making the palms waver under the pressure?
I look through a thousand fronds diffused with sun flashing
above visions of a beach set loose in the street
and dull surfboards.
Either she wasn’t at yoga
or the landlord snagged her to complain
about the neighbors, motorcycles, or her little dog,
but rarely about her
and her current situation, which means me.
For this we’re grateful.
Twilight: filaments of pink
and blue tie-dyed cups –
the bra she’s wearing.
ASKING YOU
Because of where we walk, there is very little light, but your face shines.
I turn to ask you if the Magna Graecia temples in ruin aren’t beautiful
and you say sì, sì. I touch the gaping mouth of Neptune and he swallows
my hand, his face lighting up for a moment.
For some things I have no memory –
where I left my car keys,
what my ex-lover wrote in a text last week,
why exactly I came here.
But I like to know the names of Greeks and what they did –
Sisyphus, Eurydice, Asopus –
and later, I want to know the name of these columns that limitrophe
your house like a sort of fence. Wide brick trunks opening into frames, branches
holding the field of corn and the stars I might be mistaking for planets,
heavy next to us.
