James B. Nicola
Still 2
(Sonnet)
With the first photograph of Her from space,
we saw the swirls. But now in a live stream
from the Space Station on the Website, you
can see Her as She is now, with a face
as featured as the moon's, half in a dream
of darkness, the other half white and blue
as always–but, though still, not still, not quite,
the blue eating and eaten by the white
in millions of stirred curves which do not spin
but churn, each yang o'ertaken by a yin
and vice versa, managing to mix a
brew of something from the unseen dust.
The red beneath's the secret to the elixir,
like a yeast, a salt, a spice of lust,
which keeps the creature coiled, as passions will,
suspended in the dark of space, still.
Bio
James B. Nicola's poems have appeared in Shot Glass, the Antioch, Southwest and Atlanta Reviews, Rattle, Tar River, and Poetry East. His nonfiction book Playing the Audience won a Choice award. His first full-length poetry collection is Manhattan Plaza (2014); his second, Stage to Page: Poems from the Theater (2016). A Yale graduate, James has been giving both theater and poetry workshops at libraries, literary festivals, schools, and community centers all over the country.