Someone has spilled summer fruit—
muskmelon, cantaloupe, honeydew, peaches—
down the steps.
The ice cream man is quiet
and the girls have stopped jumping rope.
You stay in your room
like an unopened letter
and my hair tumbles down
like the hair of women in mourning.
You blame me for all this
as if I didn’t ache, too,
and the sun, on the day we broke apart,
opened her hands full of night.
— “Eclipse”
Julie Parson-Nesbitt’s first volume of poetry is a Chicago book with a history behind it. In these poems she navigates the streetwise world of the personal; comes to terms with love and interracial marriage; and undertakes a political response to her Jewish heritage.
Her poems breathe a spirit of independence reminiscent of Emma Lazarus, Emma Goldman, and Adrienne Rich. Long accustomed to a multicultural community, Parson-Nesbitt writes and performs in a variety of moods and idioms.
“Julie Parson-Nesbitt is a writer of conscience and power.”—Toi Derricotte
“We have waited a long time for this trusted compañera.”—Rane Arroyo
“The work of Julie Parson-Nesbitt excites, via its venturesomeness, its contemporary energy, its refusal to wear blinders or dark glasses”
— Gwendolyn Brooks
A native of Chicago, Julie Parson-Nesbitt is the author of two chapbooks; co-editor of a poetry anthology, Powerlines (1999).
A community-based poet, she worked for over a decade for the Guild Complex, a major Chicago arts organization.
She has taught creative writing to children and adults and read her poems at universities, bars, coffee houses and libraries.
