Nikki Wallschlaeger


Collecting Eggs

“Get ready for eggs!” says a friend.

The Ted Berrigan poem about someone who is interesting, because they remind them of an eggbeater. An omelet frying in a skillet the size of Texas.

My eggs coming down the pulpy waterslide every month, decisively silvered.

Chickens singing the “egg song” when they’ve finished laying, or about to lay. Everyone needs a good song to encourage morning release.

A massive double yolked egg. Either someone is pregnant with twins or good luck is imminent. Recommendation: buy a random lotto ticket.


Eggs the lightest of blue, the shade of bashfulness. Not blue enough to remind me of my youngest son’s eyes, but next to a white egg you are vibrant.

A wire basket woven into the shape of a chicken. I’m fond of the French vintage style; metal curlicues, reminiscent of leaflets, soften its domestic industry.

(Update: a friend sends a photo of an adorable egg basket with a thick red handle! “Coming your way,” she says. She has excellent taste and a generous heart.)

The down on mature chickens are on their bottoms. Eggs charmed by the aptitude for brooding. Eggs warmed by their feathered mother suns.

Kitten Song

Kitten on a ranch

wearing chelsea boots

with celestine pants

Kitten on the town

in a strawberry dress

with a seashell crown

Kitten on the plane

obliging a rainbow

in a bead of champagne

Kitten driving a car

wondering if her life

will be a broke memoir

Kitten cooking supper

bewitched by the ruins

full of pleasing flowers

Kitten making her bed

a long era of preservation

another lifetime ahead

For the Billy Goat Lady, Who Says He’s Her Son

Read up on what to expect in the first year of a chicken’s life.

Remember how it feels to rise in the morning, sharp with need.


Read up on the hibiscus tree and its inoculated floral meanings.

Remember love is arrangements of dew partly out of your control.


Read up on the length of time it takes for a successful egg pickling.

(Remembering as I wrote the above line, I got finger-tipped by déjà vu).


Read up on what the first crop of RuPaul’s Drag Race stars are doing now.

Remember how eager I am to wear that red dress from Universal Standard.


Read up, no, experience, the Black woman who cares tenderly for her goats.

Remember how I cared about not feeling Black enuf around the wrong people.


Nikki Wallschlaeger’s work has been featured in The Nation, Brick, American Poetry Review, Witness, Kenyon Review, POETRY, and others. She is the author of the full-length collections Houses (Horseless Press 2015) and Crawlspace (Bloof 2017) as well as the graphic book I Hate Telling You How I Really Feel (2019) from Bloof Books. She is also the author of an artist book called “Operation USA” through the Baltimore based book arts group Container, a project acquired by Woodland Pattern Book Center in Milwaukee. Her third collection, Waterbaby, is out from Copper Canyon Press.