I am A World of Uncertainties Disguised as a Girl by Nicole Lyons
Right at the beginning, page 9, I stumbled onto one of the first poems that ever made the breath rush from my lungs. “The Next Big Thing” has since remained one of my all time favorites. Each time it pops back up, I remember its punch and how it left me reeling.
The rest of Nicole’s second book of poetry delivers those same gut-wrenching, breath-stealing, high-chasing lines I’ve come to love from her. In “Freight Trains,” she steps inside my inner chaos. In “Syllable by Syllable,” she picks me apart. Nicole knows me, far better than I know myself sometimes. She’s rolling around in my head and setting my heart on fire. She’s whisky, straight up, and she knows just how to burn.
In pieces like “A Poet’s Note” and “Anchored,” she illustrates the curse of empathy with absolute precision. The way we carry the pieces of others. The way we let them weigh us down. The way we drown so others may float. Nicole is a powerhouse of love and heartache. She doesn’t decorate her pain and shadows with pretty flowers. Instead, she lets it bleed in all its glorious madness. She is courage and fire, and this book is the definition of art.
You can find Nicole on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
– ashley jane
