Nicelle Davis: California Poets Part 10, Four Poems

Nicelle Davis

April 2nd, 2026

California Poets: Part X

Nicelle Davis

Four Poems

We are Taught to Fear the Sun

When they ran out of feathers, fly wings were used. Harvesting took forever, hands not meant for fragile things, the silver teardrops of buzz collapsing between thumb and forefinger. The iridescent bodies stacked into an itty-bitty pyramid—it was mass murder the size of a face. Will we ever get tired of telling the story of how a father kills (for) his son? He simply wanted a life larger than an island for his boy. Why did the little brat refuse to listen? Daedalus drowned a thousand of these translucent wings in honey attempting to make flight. The dead bodies attracted more birds—a miracle of death inviting death. He ripped out the blackbird’s throats with his teeth—a wash of blood by the time he asked his son to launch. Imagine that swollen, red face garbling go and I love you with such fever the boy could only hear bleeding.

Origin Story

The center of a tree is called the pith; it’s where her seed first leaps towards light and this is what formed her heart. There’s no more time for descriptions. A viper is striking. Pan will be present at her death; the satyr’s hair catching on a hangnail—her ring finger. Splintered. No tree is perfect. Orpheus will notice. She said no to death, but not to the forest, whose choired leaves sing songs of rooting. When Orpheus finds her, she is planted. What was she doing with a satyr in the woods? He turns like judgement and loses her. He cries over his shortcomings, babies wake wailing. Women, wild with sleep-hunger, rip his head off with their bare hands. They toss his face into the ocean where it washes to shore still talking. This, it’s said, is the origin of poetry. 

A Red Thread Runs Through All of Us

Ariadne provided Theseus the knife to kill her brother. She was hoping to get laid for this.

I’ve heard the fat of people congeals to the shape of stars. I’ve heard human flesh tastes

like pork. I’ve heard the Minotaur began with wet kisses before mouthing chunks of a

virgin’s upper thigh.

In Theseus’s hunger to be the hero, he unraveled Ariadne, easy as a ball of thread. Knocked

her up and left her on an island made from the bones of her brother’s victims.

After cutting the bull’s head off, Theseus reached his hand from neck to skull scooping out

the brain like ice-cream. Theseus put the monster’s head on his head—a mask that shows

more accurately how he saw himself.

Missed Another Protest

The labyrinth folds

around itself like a flower,

it feels you as you touch it—

something like a brain.

You know how to run,

but instead, you shelter

in place waiting

to be eaten alive.

Your thoughts turn into

a hundred thousand nuclear bombs

down here in the dark.

You do not need light, your hands

follow the walls like a road leading

anywhere other than here.

Oh, how you put your faith

in poetry and protest signs.

You’re not stuck in a room

so much as in a mouth.

Teeth stacked like bricks,

the tongue is your red thread out.

If you can just find the next line,

you might weave an exit sign.

Here is the image of a bronze bride

suspended from the ceiling.

Someone must make

dinner for the minotaur.

That is, someone must be

dinner for the minotaur.

Author Bio:

Nicelle Davis is a California poet, collaborator, and performance artist. Her poetry collections include The Language of Fractions (Moon Tide Press 2023). The Walled Wife (Red Hen Press, 2016), In the Circus of You (Rose Metal Press, 2015), Becoming Judas (Red Hen Press, 2013), and Circe (Lowbrow Press, 2011). Penguin Noir recently won the Changing Light Novel in Verse Prize from Livingston Press and will be released Summer of 2025. Her poetry film collaborations with Cheryl Gross have been shown across the world. She has taught poetry at Youth for Positive Change, an organization that promotes success for youth in secondary schools, MHA, Volunteers of America in their Homeless Youth Center, Red Hen’s WITS program, and with MEP. She currently teaches Middle School in the High Desert.