She May Be a Saint
by Sarah Nichols
Sarah’s collection of centos investigates and blends the work of Sylvia Plath and C.D. Wright, engaging in conversation, one cradled in the pitch of shadows and “light, soaked with bones.” it is “a box of poison too pure for longings,” a release, a dichotomy. The speaker is, among other things, the “magician’s girl who does not flinch. She is so sweet in a blackout of knives.”
36 pages
open edition
Additional Info
EXCERPT
EXPERIENCES, QUIETLY HUMMING
I had a headful of bees. A gullible
head untouched
by their animosity.
How can I let them out ?
I won’t say I
like being in
prison, and
I want to
go home
to the wax house.
I was supposed to be a
virgin. But
I am
the magician’s
girl
who
does not flinch.
She is so sweet
in a blackout
of knives.
You wouldn’t believe
she had did
all the things
they say
she did.
But
with her
lion-red body
her wings of glass
She is
more terrible
than
she ever was
the
terriblest part
upon release
Sources: C.D. Wright: “In the Mansion Of Happiness,” (from One Big Self).
Sylvia Plath: “The Bee Meeting,” “The Arrival of the Bee Box,” and “Stings.”
NOTES
All of the poems come from the work of C.D. Wright and Sylvia Plath, specifically the books Steal Away: Selected and New Poems (Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon, 2002), The Poet, The Lion, Talking Pictures, El Farolito, a Wedding in St. Roach, the Big Box Store, the Warp in the Mirror, Spring, Fire & All (Copper Canyon, 2016), and The Collected Poems (Ted Hughes, ed. New York: Harper, 1981). Individual poems will be cited with the poems they appear in.
Work that appears in this chapbook has appeared in Noble/Gas Quarterly, Emerge Literary Journal, and Plath Poetry Project.
ABOUT THE POET
Sarah Nichols lives and writes in Connecticut. She is the author of seven chapbooks, including This is Not a Redemption Story (Dancing Girl Press, 2018), Dreamland for Keeps (Porkbelly Press, 2018), and How Darkness Enters a Body (Porkbelly Press, 2018). Her poems and essays can also be found in The Fourth River, Glass Poetry’s Poets Resist Series, Drunk Monkeys, and theRS 500.
ABOUT THE COVER ARTIST
Meg Greene Malvasi is a writer and photographer living in North Carolina. www.littledogslaughed.com
REVIEWS
Sarah Nichols’ micro chapbook She May Be a Saint is an enigmatic exploration of a chimeric speaker, recounting the disintegration of a former identity and the darkly lyrical creation of a new self.
Reviewed by Sian Killingsworth via Poetry Cafe.