“Nicelle Davis’ newest book mythologizes pain, making grief, anger, disgust, and fear bearable by transforming them into finely wrought poems. These poems are filled with sharp edges, dissections, illusions, and images of flight, both in their language and in the ways they occupy the page. They are perfectly matched by the drawings of Cheryl Gross, who translates Davis’ poetry into an equally grotesque, equally eloquent visual language. In the Circus of You is a visceral spectacle of controlled excess; it dismantles the three rings we use to contain our most domestic horrors and shows us the way through vulnerability to release.”
—Evie Shockley, author of the new black

“Accompanied by Cheryl Gross’ illustrations of stretched flesh and biomechanical anatomies, In the Circus of Youwrithes in a fever dream of divorce, depression, and an undercurrent of poverty. Nicelle Davis directs a cast of disfigured pigs, desiccated pigeons, and circus freaks in poems whose forms are often cinched with wasp-waisted girdles or filed into jagged angles. Never simple oddities, these afflicted characters and musical poems amount to a harrowing account of loss and how one has to fracture herself in private to appear unbroken in public. Don’t miss Davis’ acts of lurching grace and terrible beauty.”

—Douglas Kearney, author ofPatter

Nicelle Davis: It's an Entirely Human Sort of Thing—Poetry

Lately, I have been breaking all my dishes. I’ve been inviting friends to break them with me. I even let my five-year old son toss a plate down some concrete stairs. I’m convinced this is poetry—that the sound of contact—of opening—is the music of being.
 

Like poetry, you have to do it (be it) to understand. So here, go ahead. Try it. Even if the throw happens entirely in your head—please!—try it:
 

Here is the plate, the cup, the bowl, you choose. Here. The implications of its blank surface—smooth in your hands—the meal that was and wasn’t—the story that was and never will be. Now release it. Your dish becomes a bird—it sings like a bell when it hits—the ground is scattered with shark-toothed fragments. You are dry underwater. You are what shouldn’t be. You are stepping between pieces of wholeness.
 

You feel ridiculous; it is so serious. You are laughing. You are crying. You are letting go.  Great poetry can't happen without some level of letting go. You must unclench your fists, your life, your eyes, your legs for a moment and let it swing out into the open air not really knowing how it all ends.  It's the lack of knowing that means you have—gasp—stepped away from the prescribed narrative. Your hand twinges slightly from the shallow cuts. You see how beneath the skin, a red garden is blooming. Between the internal and external—between release and shattering—is poetry.
 

Poetry, for me, is the art of carving out the betwixt of existence—it is the moment of conversion, that quick intake of breath when dreams enter into reality. It is never pretty. No. It is quite awkward; the product never matches the intention. But there is a magic in the effort—and by magic I mean a hope that we can pull our dreams into reality. The poem evokes an infinite vastness, the motions of raw potential, the possibility of transcendence. It is more than words on a page; it is the plate breaking.

first published on the BPJ blog

first published on the BPJ blog

Proximity

There is an undeveloped field—

no tract homes but holes

for rabbits, rattlers, packrats.

A graveyard for broken appliances and flat tires—

birds build nests in these abandoned round doors.

Out of 365 days,

we know 24 days of rain—life here

requires deep and extensive roots.

Developers wait until dark to topple and stack Joshua Trees.

It isn’t impossible to wake to a whole world

reduced to a heap—morning reminds us.

This lot has been left new because of its proximity to the prison.

Across the road is the Institution—minimum and maximum security—male inmates.

I feel a snake at my feet.
You ask, Is everything ok?
Is ok. I say but shake like a rattle.

It doesn’t seem like night falling, so much as stars rising.

Day and night weighed equally—the horizon vanishes

and the prison lights shine like earth bound stars.

You light a cigarette. In the dark, I can see you breathing

in the distance—a walking star.

We steal a shopping cart to gather objects left in the desert. We have one night to make an apocalyptic go-cart.

What else would we do? What’s left to do?

We collect what has been left behind by others. I find baby shoes and bullets—a full bucket of each.

You find a shanty town made of broken chairs and sticks.

In the dark, we imagine the worst—bullets in a baby’s foot—

buckets full.

From the back of your truck, we watch the meteorite shower.

The sun goes up like a string-puppet. The chairs’ being is to speak—

“Air Show 2014;

we were board here.”

At the foot of the prison, people can watch without paying, fireworks. Independence Day, shots are fired at the sky while babies lose their shoes to snake holes.

This is not the end of the world, but its edge.

Apocalyptic Go-Cart by Kevin Swiney

Photos by Marcelles Murdock

Words (and footnote photos) by Nicelle Davis

The Body Is / The Body is Not is a poetry performance piece that looks at the body as a border.

Using the concrete idea of body (i.e. skin, flesh, bone, blood), poet Nicelle Davis explores the abstract concepts of borders (i.e. the act of entering and entering any symbolic space). This many layered collaboration required the efforts of several talented individuals including: Louis Buchhold, Cheryl Gross, Larissa Nickel, Pavlina Janssen, Jason Hughes, Charles Hood, Dawn Fox, Emily Fox, Karl Preusser, and Joseph West.

Louis Buchold is covered in tattoos; these tattoos create a second skin—a tapestry of love affairs illustrated. (One of his tattoos is part of a collaboration that Cheryl and Nicelle have been working on. You can see more about this process by watching the documentary Tatt-Talk.) Tattoos complicate the idea of the body: 1) body-art both invites and barricades viewers from seeing the individual, 2) the act of tattooing requires penetration, yet such wounds creates a covering to the naked human exterior, 3) most people who meet Louis would recognize him from his suit and tie; they would never suspect there is a novel of inked images beneath his button-up shirt. For these, and several other reasons, tattoos expose how the body is a border--it is a place of entry and a wall of protection.   

In West Hollywood alleyway, Jason Hughes took pictures of Louis's living tapestry. Then Nicelle Davis took the images and projected Louis (as art) upon her skin. Then, artists Dawn Fox and Pavlina Janssen added paint, lipstick, glue, paper, nails, and tinfoil to the human canvas. Photographers Emily Fox and Charles Hood took photos of the mock layering.

Once they had an idea of what the process might look like, the team approached Red Hen Press to help host a performance at Boston Court Theater. Red Hen Press and Boston Court were eager to support the project. In a 15 minute poetry reading, the creative team was able to showcase what took months to assemble. With the talents of Joseph West and Karl Preusser audio and music was added to the performance. The audience was asked to help add to the layering by yelling out their own spontaneous poetry about the body.

Everyone brought their own stories, intended messages, and experiences to the project. For Nicelle, the project was about exploring and exhibiting basic human rights—the right to be, the right to love. (It was also intended as love message her best friend, Curtis, who is a daring advocate for human rights.) Art often is layered even in its intentions–isn’t that a sort of magic.

Hopefully, whoever sees this piece will bring their own visions of what it means to be human.

Mock-up photos by Emily Fox

Boston Court Performance Photos by Jason Hughes

Karl Preusser, music; Pavlina Janssen, actor / artist and costumes: Larissa Nickel, actor / artist; Louis Buchhold III, actor / artist;  Joseph West, magic; sound / video, Jason Hughes, photography; Curt Hanson, help and support.

Place—a Pastoral of Amplified Flesh

Intersections of rivers and roads—fibrous—

vein and vessels spread beneath us—

as though we’re candles passing over

or hands plunging under 

the unattainably of location. A map

is made by omitting–

territory synonymous with unsayable

events. Let me rephrase:

I knew a woman who burned finger sized

scars in her arms with erasers—

marking how she was pinned to an orchard—

the taking of all her fruit.

I knew a man who housed a virus—science

cut doors to his spinal cord.

He welcomed doctors into the parlor of his

back, but they came for his kitchen.

Hands inside another. This man, woman,

were conscious at entry.

When they said, this hurts. No one stopped

the hurting.

A light passes over—How many hands

before a stopping place?

Tattoo

If the body is border

how is it crossed?

Double-back

and extend.

Reproductive Structures

I

She is 6 months in with her 3rd.

State will fund first, but not

the younger—conceived too

soon after her eldest, this new

and unborn warrant no support.

Lion-faced and oddly limbed—

she waves to me with six arms—

boy on each hip—little guns are

growing at her sides—bing, bing,

they point their fingers to shoot

stars, while she says, won’t be in

class—she needs to find work.

Sierra Highway, she says. If you

know J-Trees, you’ll understand

she’s mapping the stroll. Bing!  

go boys, but the North Star

continues to shine.

II

That night, I dream of closed eyes.

While understanding intercourse

is happening, I watch her fetus

sleeping. It doesn’t know motion

from ocean—doesn’t know ocean.

This is only a dream. Intercourse

hasn’t happened. This is only ubiquity—

spore dividing into new wholes—the future.

III

I see her again, three weeks later with three 

half-written papers. She has kept the bump

and to her rented room. She is glad to have

come to school today. It has become hard

to leave—covers so heavy and soft. She is

afraid to face light most days. The papers

are generic, what did you do last summer?

Not my prompt, hers. I tried to find my

maternal mother. I want to brush her broken

teeth, but I accept the papers instead. As she

leaves I build rooms made of blankets in my

head—a fort that allows only enough in—her

living in a flame that doesn’t burn—a womb.

Story

The day I changed my name,

I stood in the SS line with a man

just release from prison. He

showed me, J o h n—sewn into

his flesh—needle, thread, and

a broken bic pen. This is how

 it is done when you lack—

he told me.

When concrete amplifies all celled

voices into one—you must write

against the unremembering of bars.

See here, my name stitched into

my skin. My name in my body

even after they buried the idea

of me in that pulsing house.