Posted 1/6
New Year’s Day
We have no black-eyed peas, and the snow
that was supposed to come didn’t come.
The pork turned; the greens are bitter;
the moon wanes, and the dog’s in heat.
Still, there’s some hard happiness,
a solid place to set your drink,
like wood, or stone, granite, gold,
like a body, not imagined or projected,
but sitting on the other side of the table,
a face in a spoon, a soft frayed napkin,
recounting the last few decade’s dreams
“New Year’s Day” is a poem from the collection Everything is Temporary by Artist-in-Residence, Nicole Callihan.
On September 29, 2020, Nicole Callihan was diagnosed with breast cancer. A double mastectomy, a lymph node dissection, radiation, and hormone therapy followed. All the while, she committed to her everyday practice of making art. Many of the recordings were originally posted to the weekly open-mic series, Wednesday Night Poetry; the images that accompany the poems were selected from her Instagram collection @thebluepitcher. These are poems and notes she took in the months that followed her diagnosis.
See Nicole Callihan read her work below:
