new book, Territories, out now
Hi! My new book, Territories, is out now on Instagram. The book is a long scroll, available totally for free, here:
@Territories
Official synopsis and trailer are here:
In the aftermath of a second American Civil War, professional wrestler Pain Reade drives town to town, match to match, while discovering a new ability that could rocket him to the top of the card.
A cautionary road story about America, Territories is a love note to fatherhood and our ability to heal.
5 notes
·
View notes
my first mental health month
My First Mental Health Month - by Nick Orsini on Medium
43 notes
·
View notes
night classes
Weight plate, forty pounds
on the small of my back-
Father and son, Tampa-bound
to stand for the anthem.
Parachute down to the fifty
yard line, camouflage dad
hats all losing their minds.
The cell phone in my pocket’s
got nothing social about it.
The last photo of me was
taken with a Powershot ELPH.
Drawers full of others
taking the place of myself.
Suburban hate crime
outside of the mall.
Broken Ruby Tuesday’s glass
mixed with Sodium Chloride salt.
Wonder in nightmares
about a new Civil War.
Brothers killed brothers while
the world never got small.
Panic attacks, feet stuck in sand,
moving through days
with the grace of an
Interstate accident.
A baby delivered in a Burger
King kitchen wakes me
at night in a cold sweat,
complete with convulsions.
Futures like ovals, stuck
in a night class lecture
on perfect shapes
made imperfect by pressure.
17 notes
·
View notes
Bankers Box
401(k) bleak balance over quarters
makes me wonder how closer we
are to cut-ins, live from a sidewalk,
bankers boxes for businesses.
Anchors scraping sand, wondering
where the time went. “When did you
know it was coming unglued?”
At least ISIS is beaten, swept away
with a broom, the last firing synapse
from 2002. Christian Bale thanking
Satan for the times we’ve lived through.
A groundhog saw his shadow
the same day my friend overdosed.
Six more weeks of winter,
Gates of Heaven, dust-to-dust.
Another warm October, watching
Dutchess apples confused to rot.
Pressure smashing into pressure,
a line-graph car accident.
12 notes
·
View notes
Mud City
A Barnegat brain, fogged from
a night spent in the state park.
Paths to evacuate a hurricane,
a calm, slow walk over Route 72:
the tongue of the bridge freezing
all that unruly, sideways rain.
Run a hand over reeds,
boarded up small businesses
receding. Mud City between
fingers, as waves run their
nails over my sneakers.
Waterproof Jeep, every
hand-in-hand mile, took
trips to the grocery when
mom couldn’t cook.
Snap buttons hold the
roof, covering each first,
last worldly possession.
Left when the roots of
childhood Timbers grew
into the kitchen.
Radio’s red finger cracks
a warning from speakers:
to abandon homes,
to seek and hold shelter,
to find a ground higher,
not all ground is equal.
A matted dog licks my
fingers in front of plywood,
“Save us, Jesus.”
I name this dog Noah
right before retreating.
22 notes
·
View notes
Mean Gene
Bought a used Hasbro
Mean Gene at the flea
market in the Meadowlands.
Hollowed it out after a
Home Depot run so we
could get high with him.
Lately thoughts come
with gills, with scales,
to swim through an
aquarium with no
gravel or shelter,
with nothing to hide them.
Garage door opener stuck,
VCR with a blank tape -
A Monday Night spent,
a few Tuesday heavyweights.
Missing Oregon, the car
rides to the waterfall.
My dad would pack
snacks in a cooler.
5 hours felt two weeks
long. The forest stretched
And blurred like a flip book.
Inconsistent speed, distorting
the woods in the windows,
the snow over the hood.
1993, center-cut on a TV-
Gene, Ric, and 40,000 in
Biloxi, Mississippi.
photo appeared in Rolling Stone
21 notes
·
View notes
New Dad.
Talking to you on the phone, I just want to let you know that you still sound like you. Friends check on friends, even though it’s easier to assume we’re great. New dad? Must be so thrilled. New job? Must be so successful. New relationship? Must be so happy. Look at all those photos - you in Burlington, with your dog, your mom, presents - spending your life living, right?
Over this year, music got sad - sad to the point that the people who were making it were using it as an unheeded call for help. When we lost artists, we tweeted and listened on Spotify. Not enough plays to bring an artist back. Where I teach, a teenager quoted a rapper in the yearbook. The lyrics were not boastful, but instead full of regret and tilting uncertainty. There are small moments when you know the world has shifted its plates, turned on its axis, changed entirely without you knowing.
Check on your friends - because being a new dad is scary when you live paycheck to paycheck. New jobs mean piles of new responsibility, longer hours, more pressure. New relationships come on the heels of old relationships, and most of those leave scar tissue, some leave broken skin. Being successful does not change the chemistry in your head, in your body.
Back to our call - you’ll never lose me no matter how much space you need. When the gaps close, I’ll still be here caring, keeping you in my thoughts, imagining you happy, no matter if you are or are not. When I picture us, we are at the reservation, you’re taking photos, I’m trying so hard to look important. I remember us at Melrose Diner, sitting, talking. Surrounded by friends in love with one another. The night never breaks to the day, just a small moment I’ve kept forever.
photo by Bill Cannon
11 notes
·
View notes
The Lego Store in Rockefeller Center
Adorkablelife has been reopened and will be updated with new poetry, letters and songs. The past few years have been hard. This is that story.
There is a version of us,
of me, of you, on upstate
acres. Dreaming about it
feels real: chickens, golden years-
rain between grass under
feet, in nostrils, mixed tears.
An ache, or a panic, or a manic
stress response, a physical
me, a mind wandering on.
Hold it in a photo, hung
in our apartment - the
mountain we climbed, the
castle, the fountain. Your
blue hair in gallons of
tourists, the falling in love
that cost us a fortune.
Reflected in a Lego Store
window, the glasses, the
rose tattoo. Children born
in homes, in apartments-
Life over a wire- to get
close is to still never touch it.
The poet returned with
the town waiting, listening,
for a story of spring, of
pollenated beginning.
The reality bit, broke the
skin singing. The tree,
the lights, the loop of
laughing from the rink.
A stranger’s shoulder in
our photo, fingers brushing
over a creek. Irrigating
acres and miles to allow
you to drink.
33 notes
·
View notes
44
44 hung in my suburb,
on a front lawn.
They hung Her too,
orange prison clothes on.
Stuffed dolls strung in trees,
and my white blood cells -
a response to disease.
Trapp Comics, Foodtown,
income that lets you move
out, and stay out. Visit on
Thanksgiving, seltzer from
Walt’s Liquor King. You
quit when they found that
weak part of your heart’s lining.
The bagel place is making
bagels great again. A
Mercedes-Benz, a bumper
sticker: The War on Christmas
is The Only War Worth Winning.
Every other house for sale-
white realtors, white photographs,
gelled-hair pushed straight back,
just a couple kids who never left.
44 hung in my suburb,
hung in effigy, in a gray suit.
On Winden Drive, leading
up to the high school.
20 notes
·
View notes
the darkest timeline
If youve been feeling overwhelmed by things, read this. I’ve been really coming to terms with a ton this last year.
https://medium.com/@nicholasrorsini/notes-on-rabbit-holes-78428e44b075
4 notes
·
View notes
Red Roof Inn Express
I spent Christmas at a Red Roof Inn Express.
A special kind of misty, public lonely with
the shapes of people who never really left.
Another species on the brink,
another acquaintance on the edge
of Facebook with my parents.
Another artist burned up in a
white-hot structure fire of tweets
and of drugs. That’s the world:
Aspirational light that tows
a line between back-breaking and
just heavy enough.
Sorrow is hurricane-swept foam on
high tide, existing for a second
and displaced at the same time.
Through it, we remain waiting for
the good news of our favorite song’s
refrain - taking us back to basements,
to long drives, to photos of power lines
in the middle of a hazy place.
A poet with major depression,
a manic genius wasting away-
all for the claims of residency
in the hearts, minds - Mundane
chronicles of a people spinning
one thousand miles-per-hour through
a solar system, a universe that’s reflecting
off another planet’s lake. A fire between
two more hearts across a soundless
vacuum called outer space.
22 notes
·
View notes
I’ve been having a hard time processing this latest mass shooting and writing about it helps
https://medium.com/@nicholasrorsini/leaving-the-house-2b61e5626a5a
6 notes
·
View notes
#ihearyou
so, I know too many women affected by sexual harassment, a lot of whom have been telling their stories. My heart breaks for each and every one of you.
https://medium.com/@nicholasrorsini/ihearyou-2eae725f9792
20 notes
·
View notes
taking a knee
here’s an article I wrote about football, me, and what it means to take a knee.
https://medium.com/@nicholasrorsini/just-stop-watching-it-9774998a149b
7 notes
·
View notes
Dunkin’ Donuts
Hi. Every year I write about this. Every year I hope things can get better. This is the story of a town that, sixteen years later, never healed from the events of September 11th. If you haven’t read this story, here you go:
Dunkin’ Donuts by Nick Orsini on Medium
give me some claps on this one.
18 notes
·
View notes
fostering kittens
hi.
I wrote this over on Medium. It’s important. Please take 4 minutes to read it.
https://medium.com/@nicholasrorsini/fostering-kittens-9875cd64a258
12 notes
·
View notes
Our generation had no “Howl.” Now we do.
MeadowlandsPoem.com
14 notes
·
View notes