Robbi Nester
Robbi Nester, Poems
Robbi Nester is the author of 6 published books of poetry, including a chapbook and three collections, the most recent of which is Narrow Bridge (Main Street Rag, 2019). Her poetry, essays, and reviews have been published widely in journals, anthologies, and on weblogs, most recently in Live Encounters, Gargoyle, Verdad, Verse Virtual, Pirene's Fountain, and Rhino. Robbi also edited an ekphrastic e-anthology, The Plague Papers, available at Poemeleon.
She is an elected member of the Academy of American Poets and holds an MA in English/Writing from Hollins University as well as an MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) and PhD from UC Irvine and is a retired college educator.
Disquiet
(After a photograph by Kylli Sparre)
On the ocean floor, sleeping groupers camouflage
themselves as rocks, cocoon in clouds of sand
and mucus spun out of the substance of their
bodies, as spiders’ spinnerets let down a line
of silk. I’m like that, like the whelk within
its fortress of a shell, shielded in a vaporous
swirl. It doubles as a dress of white
chiffon, inverted parachute that spirals
around my body like vanilla soft serve,
ribbon of cream in coffee. When I feel
threatened, the dress sets up its own
internal wind and weather, swallows me
whole. At the first sign of threat, it
automatically inflates. I take flight
on milky tides of moonbeams,
streamers of phantom light.
Her Complaint
(After In the Distance, by Andrea Kowch)
Something’s always rising, whether sun or wind or sudden
flames flaring in the old oak after a storm. Just now, more
loaves are proofing in the oven, dough unfolding, doubling.
So many mouths, all of them hungry. The world’s voracious,
and I must feed these hungers with these hands, this body,
kneading, rolling out the dough. Even at night, after the baking’s
done, no rest. I am kneaded in my turn, the soft mounds
of my breasts, my belly, always making something new
out of the substance I’ve been given, rising to the task.