Issue > Poetry

Nic Walker

Nic Walker lives in Houston, Texas and has an M.F.A. in poetry from University of Houston. She currently teaches at Lone Star Community College. Her work can be found in Southern Humanities Review.

The Curator

From the Terra Cotta Warriors, I continue
to the Paleontology Room and linger

in a dim corner. Single spotlights
illuminate slices of petrified tree trunks
displayed like flat screens on black-carpet walls.

The wood,
glimmering, frozen galaxies.

If God sliced through us,

we would be as beautiful.
A mass of red, lustrous strokes

blurred—perhaps,
a few canary-hued suns bursting.

Patrons stopping at my glass encasement,
wondering who this might be.