Tag Archives: Nicole Pero

Brigantine Beach Blues

I feel in me a shuddering hole

formed of broken seashells and boardwalk splinters,

gone too soon for my comfort, I want

to spend days upon days huddled in the ’90s set,

Golden Girls style. Mirrored walls,

glass and white wicker furniture

plus a cruddy pull-out couch.

This timeshare is what’s keeping me whole,

sunburned and laughing at my father

who left the keys in his other swim trunks.

He calls the locksmith, one hundred dollars for

a credit card and a quick jiggle of the knob.

It sounds like the word for mourning

something you haven’t lost yet.

Nicole Pero is a senior at SUNY Geneseo who loves sleeping in, painting her nails, and making questionable financial decisions. She wants to make it to the ripe old age of eighty so she can crochet on her front porch, and screech at anyone within a few yards.

Everyday Hauntings

I see an open-mouthed man in her pupil. He is pressed to the glass.

He looks lost and confused, and every time her eyes close for a blinking

second I hope he won’t be there, but those yellowed teeth and frenzied

laugh lines stick like window clings. I start seeing him in others’ eyes, too,

my mother, sister, paper boy as I hand him an envelope for the daily trek

up my hill. The man makes tired yawns sometimes, his hair haphazard

and sleeping robe open to age-spotted chest. I find the man in my cereal spoon,

flipped upside down but still looking haggard. It is when he paints the mirror glass

that I shatter it with a wayward golf club and stop going to work.

Nicole Pero is a senior at SUNY Geneseo who loves sleeping in, painting her nails, and making questionable financial decisions. She wants to make it to the ripe old age of eighty so she can crochet on her front porch, and screech at anyone within a few yards.