Spotlighting Chicago Poet Nancy Botta
In celebration of National Poetry Month 2019, The Electric Review introduces Chicago-area poet Nancy Botta. As readers know, the ER rarely publishes original work. For me to publish someone, their work must be exceptional both in tone, style and originality. In turn, a single tour through Botta’s work evinces why she appears here now: A young master of Haiku, Botta’s imagery stabs and presses, embedding itself in the heart, haunting the buried layers of the consciousness with its raw honesty. Alas, there seems no better forum than National Poetry 2019 to let her work speak for itself.
Three Haiku
Downpour
Wet season arrives
with muddy hems and soft groans—
black umbrellas bloom.
Mire
Drifting morning fog;
rivulets gather and wash
over broken trees.
Luna
A cool milky moon
spills through an open doorway—
she drinks in silence.
Original watercolor by Eric Ward, © 2019. All rights reserved.
Rosemary
I used to like roses,
and a stiff drink-
maybe?
I can’t recall now,
it makes the scar itch.
They said I argued too much,
“quarrelsome and prone to hysterics”-
footnotes to an epithet (or is it epitaph?)
Sometimes my skull aches,
and sometimes I forgetthereisaspacebetween
my
self,
like a pocket of air
beneath the skin.
(helpless blood pooling
into a nice white space)
I don’t know why
I’d bang and scream,
why I’d claw at my arms
and let things vex me so much,
claw at their eyes
and let them vex me so much.
Troublesome;
but they had a cure,
a treatment for tempests
drinking from tea cups-
I told them
I told them
I don’t like the blankness
filling up my mind—
did you know
I used to like roses
and a stiff drink?
by Nancy Botta
© Nancy Botta. All rights reserved.
Nancy Botta lives in a Chicago suburb with her husband, son, and a menagerie of tropical fish. A marketing concierge for a multinational conglomerate, Nancy has been publishing poetry in digital forums online since the halcyon days of LiveJournal and AOL 4.0. Her most recent works have appeared in WINK: Writers in the Know; Soft Cartel; Three Lines Poetry; Furtive Dalliance; Haiku Journal; and other publications. Find her, and the remainder of her poetry, at https://rustedhoney.com/.
Electric Review 
Reblogged this on Rusted Honey and commented:
Thanks to John Aiello for featuring me on his blog, The Electric Review.