“A poem is when you have the sky in your mouth.” – Jean-Pierre Siméon

Poet

As a writer and as a poet especially, Hollis believes that nothing is ever wasted. Any observation or experience, any snippet of conversation, is fair game, and so she is never, ever without a notebook. Worlds can be created with very few words doing double or triple duty until they sing or hurt – or both.

Hollis’ poems (one of which was nominated for a Pushcart Prize) have been published and/or are forthcoming in multiple journals, including Rattle, Barrow Street, Phoebe, the Ocean State Review, VIA, AMS/Cipher Literary Magazine, Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine, Root & Star, Global Poemic, Lilith, Carmina Magazine, and Scoundrel Time. She is also contributing Editor on the Board of Barrow Street Books in New York City.

Hollis studied poetry writing with Sharon Olds (Southampton Writers Conference) and Daniel Hoffman (Penn), and she has Peter Covino to thank for his boundless inspiration and critical eye. She loves doing readings, from the formally organized to the joyful chaos of a slam or an open mic.

Below are some of Hollis’ poems that have been published in print and/or online:

Omelet Nation

And a country slaps over on itself
as the fatted pan heats,
half bubbling
half spitting
its middle oozing,
the diced and julienned
facing off, transition
quick as a
fork stir,
states of matter in
spatula, liquid maybe to solid no
as we flip and season,
bits hissing
where they fry, defy
laws, molecules slowing despite
the flames, weeping
edges harden,
stop short
between fluff and burn, the test,
they say, of any true
chef, of
greatness.

 

Published in Scoundrel Time, October 2024

Working the Room

You’re not half the artist he is, his work hanging, as you well know, in world-ranked museums of modern art not to mention that gallery just off Madison and he’s recently been commissioned for a new design café, I could go on, but what’s the point.

I could introduce you but it’s your responsibility to hold his attention, make yourself interesting, remember why you were invited here in the first place and why you do, in fact, still show up in searches, although no one here sees you, invites you over.

Interesting that you bring your wife to these gatherings, that although you need a bit of help to rise from your chair you still fetch drinks and bites for her from the buffet while she scans the crowd with the look of a bird who has lost its formation en route.

I do see you, might even remember you, checked your work quickly just in case before leaving to come here tonight, and though it’s disappointing to meet the face behind the canvas, like the time I met that author I used to admire, here we both are.

 

Published in Scoundrel Time, October 2024

Ocean Road

Some skincare people tried to bottle it once, the scent of that road to the beach, the
essence of privilege breezing past toil, that heady combination of ocean, farmland,
hyacinth and continually cut grass, hidden sweat,

and when he spent half his privet trimming earnings to send a small bottle back to his
little sister Rosario, he hoped she wouldn’t see the stains on the envelope, or imagine
the filth underneath, ageing mowers bumping in backs of trucks,

so maybe she, too, could come, as they all came, answering the call, could join him,
and he wouldn’t let her be one of the browner crowds at the bus stop, he would make
a clean space in his shared truck for her, a colourful cushion for her to sit on,

where she could finger her beads and look out the truck window as they ride, high
above even the SUVs, be hypnotized by the privet symmetry he helped to create,
notice the near invisible nods of the men on each pristine corner,

and breathe in Ocean Road, knowing that she now shares those same notes of lemon
verbena, bergamot, white hyacinth, jasmine, linden blossom, gardenia, orangeflower,
dune rose, sea grass, cucumber, driftwood and musk.

 

Published in Amsterdam Quarterly, autumn 2024 (41st issue), Migration theme

Agamemnon, in Ontario

Would they come back to life a hundred times,  for you to do the same again…

No God warned you to cover your tracks,
pull that car and its booty out of the cold canal.

Our smiles were too wide, necklines too low, father,
to secure us a rung at a safe distance from your honour.

You never did the math and forgot others would;
all that remains when the sun comes are the numbers.

Ten of us set out but only six returned, six beds booked.
One car and one wife missing, and three girls gone.
Two wives, one barren.

Fifteen hours to deliberate; four counts of first degree.
One son defiant, complicit. Twenty-five years of lock-up.
One warning, unheeded.

You never understood this new land, but here it is,
too late; you shall feel its full winter weight roll over you.

You met unfavourable winds, concubine in tow,
blown off course, yours then as ever the greater disgrace.

Not one of you will make it, now, to Niagara Falls,
to Heaven or Home, or to Troy. No betrayal more than this.

 

Published in Amsterdam Quarterly, autumn 2024 (41st issue), Migration theme

Shifting Gears

The accident has made of me your old bike, beloved &
        only ride, gear shifts unsteady, occasional tension spoke

requiring realignment, night lighting, bell clear as a
        bell when pressed, but asymmetry ache where there

should be two-by-two’s, forward momentum a muscle
        memory, your face finding wind & its small delights,

shifting into lower gear for this uphill race, saddle warmed
        & waiting, wheels pumped in patient pursuit of a new lane.

 

Published in Amsterdam Quarterly, summer 2024 (fortieth issue), Vibration(s) theme

Hidden Gifts

Claim this feather call,
colloid of song.

If cackle were caw or whistle a taunt;
if strutting had a sound, if pleading a peep.

Listen.

Deconstruct the whir shaving the breeze:

The hummingbird
and her last trumpet flower.

Published in Amsterdam Quarterly, summer 2024 (fortieth issue), Vibration(s) theme

Cherry Picking at the Altar

Roughly translated,

it means

a smoke pot, burning red like gold.

Then many ways to say greatness

and forgiveness, witness

as a goat is sacrificed

in the bloodiest of detail,

body parts and sacred drips.

 

And though I am riveted

by the red gold, the smoke,

my spirit stilled and inward,

the goat gets in my way

every year,

its eyes open and helpless,

its throat open, hooves

upward

 

while I flip pages backward,

looking for a place to rest.

Published in Carmina Magazine, Mythology for the modern day – September 2022

 

Photo by petr sidorov on Unsplash

Essential

For those who take our midnight calls who cry
who seek our voice in the dark who imagine
who create who connect who listen who swab
who run back into the fire for us who poke
through rubble who turn off the lights in the lab
Let us pray
For those who scan and stack who make us laugh
who look into our eyes who make us forget
who feed us who bleed and breathe for us
who tell our stories for us who take us
to breast who sing to us who purr and slow blink
who wag and bark for us when we open the door
who say here take mine for I have enough
who give us the dignity of work when there is
none
who give us reason to get up
who remind us of when
who remind us
Let us rise

and take
3
steps
back

Poem published on wine cellar press in the Defense of Democracy issue, June 2022

Ask the Children

The youngest know.

They know boot crunch from tank whir, missile whistle from rocket whine.

They can count seconds to boom and brazen light bursts, the broken nights.

They can nod off to anthems, echoed tunnel cries, or blast-bitten lullabies.

 

They can draw it all.

There’s the house as it stood where it stood when it stood. There’s the tree.

There’s grandpa’s face in the house window and papa’s face in the bus window.

There’s the dog that didn’t come out of the rubble. There’s his empty leash.

 

They know the colors of blood on flags and sunflowers,
just the right blue, the right yellow, the right red.

​On this World Poetry Day 2022, all my words are for the brave, brave, children of Ukraine.

The Pupil

Vowels in the trickle of a fountain,
chasing mosquitoes over a fake pond:
‘A’, ‘E’, ‘AA’, ‘EE’, ‘EI’, ‘IJ’, ‘UI’…

Bueno. De nuevo. The low drone of a plane,
too close to the city on its way wherever,
distracting, vuelos y viajes, here in the wet
breeze in the wet leaves, anemic sun

a tease through the grey, those vowels
are just not round enough, twisted as
the church bell, whose half hours sound
like one o’clock, always one o’clock,

hints of a lunchtime not yet deserved,
missing a radio’s stadium static, el partido.
A bird screams, I’m landing, and lands.
Bracelets jingle, silvered circle punctuation

between enunciations. Try again, mija.
A motorcycle boasts the wrong way down
a one-way street, ay no mas, not this time,
‘O’, ‘OO’, ‘OE’, out of reach.

‘The Pupil’ (published in Songs of Eretz spring 2021 issue)

Poet’s Notes:  “The Pupil” is one of my migration themed poems, a subject that is an important part of my family history, my life interests, and my writing. My Cuban neighbor in Amsterdam and her efforts to learn the Dutch language and culture are what inspired this poem. Those vowels are just not round enough…

Editor’s Note:  Kurman constructed a poem filled with fine descriptive language and the senses. TLC

Just Girls

We were black and white girls with backyard passages so we
             wouldn’t have to go around the block and knock, wouldn’t
alert our brothers or interfere with their one-on-ones or alert
             our parents making dinner, mine likely easy leftovers so our
working mom needn’t fuss, hers likely grit and greens working
             their organoleptic magic in my mouth; at her house I watched their
ways for clues, whatever I could borrow or pocket, studying her ways
             of belying her stature, a wisp of iron, cool little ocelot, afraid of
no one, all protection and sinewy strength at my side, no one
             color barred, oh and next to her black limbs mine of no color
felt futureless and blank, though we shared skinny and felt
             forever in friendship, would tiptoe around her father forever,
but even before our friendship faded I saw how she squirmed but
             still sat by my grandfather and relived his tales of escape, still
listened to his ocean crossings, radiating a respect as she listened
             that the white girls just couldn’t muster, and I knew then that
home was near, that we’d laugh our way out of danger all the way home.

‘Just Girls’ (published in Lilith magazine, Winter 2020-2021 issue)

Lilith Poetry Editor Alicia Ostriker comments:

“The perspective of the poem is the perspective of a young girl, full of specific experience. Starting with the title, where the word “just” has the contradictory double meanings of “merely” and “righteous,” this poem about an interracial friendship is light and serious at the same time, and feels deeply truthful. Its truth includes the “backyard passages” needed to create and sustain such a friendship, and the rarely-expressed truth that white people may wish to emulate Black people. There’s also the beauty of the language and rhythms, with their brilliant alliterations, assonances and imagery. And I’m left with two questions: Is the Black girl learning from the Jewish grandfather what a “tale of escape” might mean for her? And what might “home” mean for these girls and for us?”

And Now

If butterflies could claw deep, draw
blood, not just light and flutter, then
they would be our conversations, our not
touching, anchors as winds steal pages,
flit and table tilt, our magnet energy and its
skittish opposite; our breath unbreathed.

All sleight of wing and distraction, the
burn and zag turning heads despite
bright blossomed backgrounds, touching
just enough to stir, heal, droplets recalling
pools, occasional oops, never long enough
to wound or unwind, unholy time this time.

 

‘And Now’ (published on Global Poemic, with art work by Eva Mantell)

Oxygen

A machine detecting dye, the parry
padding into the room where he lies,
wordless, feet stilled and arms bound.
His glasses have been removed,
his pockets emptied.  A life fills

those pockets, the tokens and coins,
addresses and appointments. Cash, still.
Hints of barter expired.  I clutch his coat
and dapper hat in my lap, breathing in
deeply, as he cannot, to record his scent.

The apartment chokes on his clutter
and unfinished, unopened, unpaid.
Beyond his windows the not yet sun,
bouncing upward from building angles.
We pace, sit, wait.  Television grates.

From the doorway I see only
sheets and blankets in tangle;
a rise too small to describe
a man.  How many hours ago
had the coughing commenced?

The whoosh of car tires in the rain white
noises our sleep. For one slow moment
the high floor nights return, doormen guarding
our years-of-taking-things-for-granted, so sure
we had a right to that address, to one another.

He was a perfect tweed, a dimpled felt hat,
not yet visored souvenir nor hospital cap.
Lonely yet stately at home, his pride in saving
lives. The city would greet him, “Ah, Doctor,”
not yet tempted to take his elbow or to cry.

When the phone call comes, crumple
and break.      Wait, we’ve not yet
spoken today; wait, take my oxygen;
wait, the policemen called you “sir” in the
middle of the night, carrying you back to bed.

Wait.

‘Oxygen’ (Intima, Fall 2018)

In her May 2020 article on the Intima Crossroads blog, Sophia Wilson quotes Oxygen extensively.

February On the Herengracht*

Snow,
not the kind that heralds frozen waterways,
an eleven-city race on skates, but a change
on the cheek, a white sky smile.
Slow mist and snow, gulls
glissade low over the canals,
grey-on-grey then gone.

Curtains
wide onto feathered white, lacing
branch by branch into city time.
To be consumed by this pale
portrait, where all is stillness
save for our two forms, slow, slow
under layers of white then gone.

‘February On the Herengracht*’ (Cipher/AMS, October 2018)

 

   

Photos by Hollis Kurman

* Canal in central Amsterdam

The farm

In fits and starts, births and afterbirths,
there was blood in the grass that year.

Later, she would remember everything
but the news; adventures need endings.

The waitresses called her honey and pretended
to serve her coffee while everyone else pretended

that things were as they always were, or at least,
as they wished things had been and might be again.

In their shared, cramped, close room at night,
she spied her mother’s naked outline under

a sheer nightgown. Why a sheer nightgown here,
now? Was her brother already asleep?

Had they been informed while out walking,
cicadas hammering along the narrow path,

crunch of small feet in dry grass? We won’t be
sharing the bed we never shared, anymore.

Her mother had geared up for this non-conversation,
for this cluster bomb and its legacy of delayed

explosions; rehearsed as one might an unreasonable
request, before mirrors, at steering wheels, alone.

They too had had their weekend wake-up rituals,
the climbing in, the gambolling, but it was first the one

then the other, one pillow each. She could feel
the flaw in their private permutations, even then.

No one is equipped to deal with gone, and
part-time arrangements feed on blame for balance.

They worked out the standard deviation by themselves,
little by little, through lack of lines on classroom forms.

Much later, she realized that they had been not two,
but three, children on the farm that year, making steps up

as they went along, forging ahead because
forging goes only in one direction.

‘The Farm’ – nominated for a Pushcart Prize (The Ocean State Review, OSR vol. 6 nr. 1)

Cacao

There are mornings when the city still
smells of chocolate, inchoate, industrial.

No one notices. Yet many find themselves
suddenly slipping, talking of other gone things,

lovers or songs or shops, stopping
by the bakery, fishing in their pockets

or staring out the window, without
knowing why. They might breathe in

a little more deeply, just on their way.
When you inquire, shopkeepers nod,

the movement a mnemonic.
It is not talked about, but some say

there was an accident, a melting,
a pouring, a certain chill to the cast,

a powder, time-released in a blast,
now a random hint in the wind.

All know of someone who may have
worked there once, a man in a hat,

or a woman who was someone’s.

‘Cacao’ (VIA/ Voices in Italian Americana, vol. 22, Spring 2011 [pdf])

Scavenger Hunt

And at the end of the day
we felt we knew him less.

We’d started with objects
and foibles gathering dust.

The Oriental Lady with chipped fingers.
The Empire Globe fallen on its axis.
The Bronze Monkeys among more monkeys.
The Wooden Boxes with their cacophony of cufflinks.

The photos of smiling women.
The pens and prescriptions, filled and unfilled.
The eyeglass cases housing collar stays.
The glowing, gushing letters.

With fresh purpose we mined
the pockets, the pocketed.

Matchbooks,
dinner mints,
crumpled tissues,
bus transfers,

phone numbers,
divorce decrees,
verboten photos,
envelopes fat with cash.

Pocket vaults,
tucked enough to harbor
ex-wives, army lives,
unsavory alliances.

But there was no
chamber lost enough

for traces of us.
His children.

‘Scavenger Hunt’ (Rattle, #17, Summer 2002)

Poets & Writers from the Sewanee Writers Conference:
Charles Martin, Erin McGraw, Andrew Hudgins (American Book Center https://abc.nl/, Amsterdam, March 2016)