In Practising Ascending, Nadine Hitchiner asks: "what am I practising?", instead of: "who am I, now?"

Practising Ascending

Bruises, Birthmarks & Other Calamities 

"Across the moon-whitened street,
through bill-lit windows

like through headless 
tambourines, I watch the night run

errands; scat down its cleaning
crews—cloth and karaoke."


Night Errands 

"Honey, if I had nothing else,
I'd eat the grain from the paper
of the first year of our marriage."

Burning Again / Worty Barn

"At first, it was the moon that, without its vowels, was an alphabet. I wrote plenty when the sky was clouded, and light spread like a law. When there wasn't a pool in the garden."

On Poetry: Would We Call it Danger, or Odyssey?

"there isn’t a way in this world

a feather on a stone will make anything lighter.
And I know, sadness

has dressed me, and trumpeted on.
Each time, wish I were a beginner, again

at my own grief. Skill-less and accidental.
To know nothing, and live"

The Ungiving

"When I hold you
with my left eye,
I forget
the colour of hornets,
through the panel
of their wings. I want
to tell you,
you are beautiful,
by turning thirty
in your arms."

To George, in the Distance

"Nothing happened in the fantasy—his skin is still full
of harps."

Conservatory

"...But still, memory is what returns without returning..."

I Try Not to Place a Brow in

"and the ferry
in me that thinks
of you from harbour

to harbour, desires
deep seas."

Esther 

"And if we took the road, we drove in an old Honda. 

And if we drove in a Honda, 

there was mother’s perfume beneath the throttle," 

Like The Men in My Family 

"In the motel room,

I see my mother's flares, two-stepping 

in the curtains. My dad's perm 

in the carpet-

chunk, lifted by the skirting

boards that widen towards the corner: "

Darius, I've Stopped Imagining Things

"& a tongue’s shade, too,
can fall both ways:
paisley on felt,
or hibiscus on mohair –
there’s always the saying
& then, the softness
that doesn’t want to."

Laissez-Faire

"O, home-made boyship, 
            wyd? it’s dark here, 
read the room. y the mouth 

full of rain, hänsel? 
            y the crouton 
in the birdbath? 

sb was me yesterday. 
            felt all the things 
& brought nothing home. "

Memoir of a Twerk, Read to a Dark Room 

"You part your hair zigzag again, so I can’t ghost you. 

I swipe across your scalp & perch on its dandruff—

it snows mid-August & I feel so super special 

without my seasonal depression. 
Had such small wavelength, no true imagination. "

Self Portrait as Tinder, Canoe

"It seems I've known you for the length of music beneath my skin -- Lord
sometimes that is only yesterday. "

Seagull Pantoum

"Mama sews me a skirt

to wear to church. The seam

only kissed the sewing

machine

              & after the sermon

it confesses like wings

that lay bare their frame with each flight."

On Birds, Tristan, My Loneliness as Kafka's Diaries

"If you walked down all of the streets of New York,
it would take a little over one hundred days,
 
& you’d arrive again & again at the little finger
of time & ask for one more way
 
to know yourself. "

nadinehitchiner

Books

Selected work