“Valparaiso Sunrise”
By Matt Persike
Two-hundred moons
my life on the road has only just begun
Six-thousand tombs:
a stairway to the Valparaiso Sun
Eight bottles through
strewn broken and blue at the old Day’s soft demise
One crimson wave:
one heartbeat, slave to Valparaiso’s sunrise
"We would sit above the ocean spray through the earliest hours of the morning drinking pisco and watching the cobblestones change from Black to Blue to Burnt Orange in the sunrise creeping over the Eastern cerros at our backs before they finally decided on Gray for the waking hours. Maybe that’s why we slept through the daytime. Valparaiso used to receive more freight before the Panama Canal was shoved down Latin America’s throat, but the docks hustle and bustle from the bird’s eye. It is the city that gave birth to a Nobel-winning poet, and the port that holds some of my fondest recuerdos from Chile."
* * * * * * * * * *
“How Far Afield?”
By Ed O’Casey
we found him with his words
cut in two
their ink draining from the page onto the field
and seeping around the corners
into the channels of our insteps
his mouth fixed in an infinite
yawn both eyes at half mast
perhaps to commemorate himself
we saw dozens
hundreds like him but for the fact
that he had a vocabulary and was damned
to share it with the uncomprehending soil
our destination still days off
we wandered the loosely knit fields
like the tick of a chthonian clock
or the geometry of isolation
[Ed O´Casey also submitted a poem for April 3.]
Nicolet College acknowledges and appreciates the transformative nature of poetry. This project honors National Poetry Month's goal of highlighting the pleasure of reading poetry. For each day throughout the month of April, Nicolet students, staff, and community members who reside within the Nicolet College district are invited to submit an original poem.
Guidelines
Guidelines: (1) Include your name, the title of your original poem, and a brief comment about yourself; (2) Poems may be in any language (please include an English translation); (3) Poems may not violate Nicolet's Social Media Guidelines; (4) Original poems may be submitted anonymously; (5) Submit poems to Ocie Kilgus (okilgus@nicoletcollege.edu). Students who submit original poems are eligible for the Best Original Poem contest. The student with the best poem will be awarded the Ron Parkinson Poetry Matters Student Scholarship Award in the amount of $300. The community member with the best poem will receive dinner for two at Church Street Inn, Hazelhurst. Upon the closing of the Poetry Project, a faculty committee will select the winning poems. The winners of the contest will be recognized at Nicolet College's Award Ceremonies on May 10.