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.