Still Life with Avalanche

Abstract

Still Life with Avalanche Nikki Zielinski (bio) I was thirteen years old when I learnedI was God; in the shower, iciclesformed down my thighs, every face I would ever destroyfrosted for a moment on my skin.When the other girls slept over, they swapped tips for shaving their legsas I willed their hair into voices & braidedthe sound of their screams into echoing gulls. There were no propheciesto advise me, so when the boysunhooked my bra & cupped me in their hands, I did not know they wouldcrack like that, the fingers,then the hands, arms, shoulders, until I was alone in some car beside a seat full of snow, our breathstill steaming the windows. I becamemy own prophet—loved birches in winter, blind spiders inhabiting caves so darkthat sight had become vestigial, the sound of airwhipped by the fan. Loved snow, loved every boy morein those seconds when their bodiesclung to form, before crumbling into the ever-rising drifts—the eyes, lips,the look of surprise wrought in ice.My mother was a painter. She'd paint a doll, [End Page 153] then a pile of pine needles, then a slabof stone over the needles: Still Life with Rock,fifty or more in the series. One night, I covered them all with white finger paint. She told methey were better that way. She told me everythingis more beautiful when it's buried. [End Page 154] Nikki Zielinski NIKKI ZIELINSKI's poems appear in Cincinnati Review, Best New Poets, Southern Humanities Review, Meridian, Sou'Wester, Vinyl, PANK, Bellingham Review, and elsewhere. A recipient of fellowships and scholarships from Djerassi, the Sewanee Writers' Conference, Vermont Studio Center, Rasmuson Foundation, Willapa Bay AiR, Sitka Center for Art and Ecology, Bridport Arts Centre, and the Ohio Arts Council, she lives in Cleveland.* Copyright © 2017 University of North Carolina Wilmington