Three Poems

By J Nic(k) Fisk
Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
 

Sojourn

I retreat to roads leaden with faceless strangers as a wight among them
and through the rubbing and bumping of our elbows feel closer and closer to human.
Through foreign anonymity
I am graced, finally, to be anyone but me
yet through communion of broken words
and arbitration with featureless others
I am turned Wicht to wicht and reborn
myself
adjurating to be
not just sapient,
but person.

Those Who Remain

Beyond our,
   this garden embroidered by floral borders
Closed to none but encased
Solitary and impregnable, this world
What are our,
   these times hastened and fermented
Turned wine, turned vinegar, turned wine again
Not sour, nor bitter, nor sweet these tones
Plucked and strummed our,
   those threads sheared and shearing
Tepid, weary things barely rooted and nearly bare
Who are we,
   those who remain.
Who are we,
   remains.

Lossy

Ochre generosity breeds seafoam honesty
Rail-steel kindness folds into itself until sunset red
Sweetest azure is playful, iridescent black.

The eye of mind is fertile canvas
that becomes barren, dry on fingertips.
Event this is scant simulacrum—
faded, exaggerated and wanting in detail.
A time before language;
Dance without movement;
Bland and frustrated
and a gap not yet nor ever bridged
but with hope of earnest unions
all the same.

About the artist

J Nic(k) Fisk is a native of Las Cruces, NM, RIT alum, and PhD Candidate in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics at Yale. They publish poetry in both the English and Spanish. Their academic work in the Townsend lab centers the evolution of therapeutic resistance in cancer and phylogenetic experimental design. At Yale, Fisk is also a McDougal Teaching Fellow at the Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning, President of the Graduate and Professional Student Senate, graduate affiliate of Jonathan Edwards, and has served as the NCWA wrestling coach.

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