James B. Nicola
[In the kiss]
In the kiss
the world of Darkness
without
is contained within.
There'll be plenty more dark
where that came from,
later,
and elsewhere,
but the void between
two lovers, at least,
is trapped by the lips
and contained;
The Invisible Man
is caught,
corralled by the Wolf Man,
for a moon.
Bio
James B. Nicola's poems have appeared stateside in Shot Glass, the Antioch, Southwest and Atlanta Reviews, Rattle, Tar River, Poetry East, and in many journals in Europe and Canada. He is the featured poet in the current issue of Westward Quarterly, having once received the same honor from New Formalist. A Yale graduate, he won a Dana Literary Award, two Willow Review awards, a People's Choice award (from Storyteller), and four Pushcart nominations—from Shot Glass Journal, Parody, and twice from Trinacria—for which he feels both stunned and grateful. His nonfiction book Playing the Audience won a Choice award. His poetry collections are Manhattan Plaza (2014), Stage to Page: Poems from the Theater (2016), Wind in the Cave (2017), and Out of Nothing: Poems of Art and Artists (2018).