On Trouble
by James B. Nicola
tornado has passed
all you kept in, outside now
except for yourself
*
every month too warm
every day mercurial
every moment, risk
*
One more person. Yow.
Truck too full, illegal now.
Short, moist, hot breaths. Ow.
*
stroll. dog approaches
owner leashed oblivious
scrouch—fast—Pet the dog
*
getting in trouble
going to heaven in spurts
how I love reading
James B. Nicola is the author of six collections of poetry, the latest being Fires of Heaven: Poems of Faith and Sense. His decades of working in the theater culminated in the nonfiction book Playing the Audience: The Practical Guide to Live Performance, which won a Choice award.
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What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “On Trouble”? I suppose that sheer irascibility had a lot to do with the evolution of “On Trouble”—not only in life, but in art, drama, and literature as well. Oftentimes, I have imagined Shakespeare poring over a copy of Aristotle’s Poetics and saying to himself something like “Whaddaya mean a tragedy has to respect the ‘Unities of Action, Time, and Place?’ Fuhgeddabout that.” After all, Aristotle wrote over eighteen centuries earlier and was codifying what Greek dramatists had been doing yet another century before that. So Shakespeare interwove sub-plots galore, cast royalty with rowdies, spanned decades, and took audiences from Rome to Egypt, from Cyprus to Venice, and from Denmark to England and back, all in a heartbeat. The theater wasn’t called the Globe for nothing. The form of “On Trouble” was born and bred by a similar response—of mine. This time, to haiku purists who eschew such mundane means as capitalization, punctuation, interjection, rhyme, enjambment, stanzas, sections, and dramatic scenario. As we say in the theater, “No rules, only tools.” Such a philosophy might get one in Trouble, of course, but is the only way we ever come up with Something New, whether a nonce stanzaic form or a nation. Besides, though syllabically similar, “On Trouble” does not claim to be “haiku” at all. I like to think of it, rather, as “ameriku.”
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Matter Press recently released titles from Meg Boscov, Abby Frucht, Robert McBrearty, Tori Bond, Kathy Fish, and Christopher Allen. Click here.
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Submissions
Poetry, creative nonfiction, and fiction/prose poetry submissions are now closed. The reading period for standard submissions opens again September 15, 2025. Submit here.
Upcoming
09/15 • Abbie Doll
09/22 • Karen Regen Tuero
09/29 • Amy Speace
10/06 • Jennifer Edwards
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10/27 • Sunmisola Odusola
11/03 • Sara Cassidy
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11/24 • Lucy Zhang
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