Last summer, Origin of Souls released Daffodils on Jupiter, a chapbook of words by Hudson Valley poet Sharon Nichols. (June 2004)

This new volume picks up where Black Flux (2002) ended. It is a continuance of the sense of love and loss that courses through our veins, the beauty and despair that punctures each of our human hearts.

Daffodils on Jupiter is 34 pages with green translucent cover and provocative B&W images.

ISBN 0-9723169-1-4 Cover price $5.95 (plus $1 postage).

Excerpt:

Lobotomized,
he cannot know to strip back
the ghostly flaps of his onion eyes.
To shovel up the heart.

The orchard waits, veiled in colorless
soul threads. You do not walk
naked into the night, your zombie foot

a fixed yellow glove, your coil
rooted-- curled salty ball--
in legends where

the heliotrope nods
and passes off into dreams.
Where the wind is wicked on stolen mirrors.
Where the beloved is jailed.

--from �The Bunkhouse (or Poem for a Hand Saw)�

With broken wings, the old man maps
Out his long colored days. (My
Captain. He is bored.) He
Marches on-- on, in wooden

Shoes-- fingering a rosary
Of bones. Marching on-- on,
Through the black
Forest, mixing myths. A

Furious maiden is buried
Under winter leaves. Impatient
Crime! In the mad city, he finds
The feeble sun troublesome. Aren't

The blossoms almost ready? The
Drowsy, fat light of morning
Swells and his shadow slips
Through the grate.

Dreams-- such a headdress!

This is a stagnant opera, a spotted
Hand directing the symphonic
Decay. The world is too old to
Remember it as it never was. Flowers

Hush! It is December. The old man
Marches on-- on, in wooden
Shoes-- in all his tortures
And blue-greys.

It was a Monday when he died.

SWALLOWED BLANK

Ten years of slumber
since you last drank

From this cup, my
Orchid. I wonder what my

Eyes had seen while I slept.
The hue of blood?

Your velvet mortal coil?
Beneath the brittle

Gods, I dreamt of the
origin of light. The

Doorkeeper motioned toward
the jewel of Morpheus

Floating in the corner of
my blue room, an enticing

Lure, to call back my
Soul, swirling to Eve.