Nicholas Michael Ravnikar
CONTACT:
Email
BIO:
Author of six books of poetry, including Imaginary Friends, Paranoise and Three Dirty Sunsets, Nicholas Ravnikar has worked as a full-time college professor, marketing copywriter, newspaper copy editor and bathtub repairman. He holds an MFA from Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. His reviews of others’ books have appeared in New Pages and the Georgia Review, and his chapbook Liberal Elite Media Rag. SAD!, on Moria Books’ Locofo imprint, is catalogued in the White House Library. Nicholas invented a poetic form called the Polish Octave that uses only the letters of an eight-letter word to compose an eight-line poem wherein each line comprises either eight letters, eight syllables, or eight words. When he’s not spending time with his partner and their children, he enjoys exercise, pickleball and skateboarding. He serves as director of The Poetry Movement, a nonprofit based out of Racine, WI, that builds infrastructure for Chiwaukee region poetry and poets. If you’re in the area, learn how to publish and promote your own poetry at thepoetrymovement.org.
PUBLICATIONS:
Imaginary Friends.
Three Dirty Sunsets.
Funky Tacos.
Paranoise.
How’s Things.
Dawn Pantomimes.
Poetry
staircase
before you
descend again
consider
the scale
of each
petrified
step — how
the feet splash
in the tears
that pool
on the worn
landing and
the ground
floor we test
with out
stretched toes
but never
seem to touch
telescope
finally my mouth
takes hold of
whatever orders
this terrain took
— dry seas
between eyeball
craters, bright
freckles on the
sea deep blue
skin of a night
sky, the naked
constellations
of neighbors
accidental
in high rise
windows across
the way — and
I shake this
rag between
my teeth
the world
won’t let go
each name
I can’t say
a skeleton key
where my
eye should be