Nostalgic Poems by Nolcha Fox

Photo by Arina Krasnikova on Pexels.comMy Mother’s Eyes

She could spot my secret spots,
anywhere where I hid.
She always saw exactly where
my thoughts went skittering off.
She observed my moods before
I felt them heat my cheeks.
Even with her back to me,
her eyes were everywhere.
With her death, I found her
with me in the strangest way.
I can see through everything.
I see the future long before
it happens. Why? My mother’s
eyes adorn my body as
her mother’s eyes adorned her,
eyes to eyes to eyes to eyes
to eyes to eyes.

previously published in Entropy

~~

Austin-Healey

You loved driving that Austin-Healey, top down, wind blowing your hair back. You grinned between puffs on your cigar. The canyon was yours to wind around your finger. The road was yours to another place. A place that only looked like the beach. It was a place where you were free of wife, children, job, and chores you listed and color-coded but never did.

I visit your grave and wonder if you’re smoking a cigar while you drive that Austin-Healey on the serpentine roads of the Great Beyond. I wonder if you drive too close to the car in front while you point to the canyon below.

I wonder if I’ll join you for a road trip when I die, hanging on in terror in the back seat.

previously published in MasticadoresCanada
~~

Cleaning House

While he goes to the bakery for cinnamon rolls, she declutters the kitchen, one cabinet at a time.

Memories spill out of the first cabinet. The morning chill, she doesn’t need that. Coffee with friends, rich and fragrant, not so important. Years of Thanksgivings, Christmases, and New Years, she didn’t see those people anymore, so they could go. Family vacations, she still had the pictures, so why keep duplicates? The move from one town to another, so disruptive, she could toss it. The death of her brother two decades ago, she was tired of dragging that out with the spice jars. Fifty years of marriage and two children, old news. Seventy-five years in California, boring.

When he comes home, he asks her why she’s staring at an empty cabinet. She says, Who are you?

previously published in Write Under the Moon

Copyright © 2026 Nolcha Fox
All Rights Reserved

Nolcha Fox’s poems have been curated in print and online journals. A best-selling author, her poetry books are available on Amazon and Dancing Girl Press. Nominated for Best Of The Net and Pushcart Prize multiple times. Editor of Chewers by Masticadores and LatinosUSA.

Website: https://writingaddiction2.wordpress.com/
and https://nolchafox2.wixsite.com/nolcha-s-written-wor/blog
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nolcha.fox/

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“inside the addled barn” by MK Kuol

Photo by George Becker on Pexels.comall the days that postdated her death
were sunless, lightless.

still, we would see grief
leavening in the brittle bones
of our frail hearts.

inside the addled barn,
i broke into a song:

some warriors won’t return from war
some herders won’t return home with herds
some flowers pollinated won’t blossom
some seeds sown won’t pullulate
some songs written won’t be sung
some prayers offered won’t be heard

my father squalled:
“weed your voice, child.
who knows death here
might be birth there”

i plucked a silent syllable
from the dilated vein of a vague vocule
i barely would vocalise
& premised with it, a poem.

the sun fluttered out of his mouth
that night
& bloomed into a bloodless moon,
after her looming spook, shaped.

Copyright © 2026 MK Kuol
All Rights Reserved

A Pushcart Prize nominee, MK Kuol is a self-taught poet from South Sudan whose work has appeared on The Selkie Publications, ANMLY, Beach Chair Press, Konya Shamsrumi, Kalahari Review, D’lit Review, and elsewhere. His biggest loves are solitude, coffee, and Arizona JJ’s music. 

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