confetti - Featured Poet: Nikkilee Kozminsky

Picture of Nikkilee Kozminsky — **Nikkilee Kozminsky**

BIOGRAPHY

Nikkilee was born and raised in Westchester, NY. She is a strong believer in her faith and lives a relatively quiet life.

Writing has been a huge part of her life the last 14 years. She has used her words to not only help herself process and heal from very difficult experiences, but extends that to the community around her and the beautiful strangers who choose to disclose their hardships. To her writing is a medicine.

After some push from her professor, who always wished for her to pursue her writing whilst becoming a part of a like-minded community, she joined the Workshop. This has been an enjoyable process for her and has led to her discovering another passion: editing.

Nikkilee is a naturally curious person with a determination to learn more about herself and the world around her. She is always seeking out new experiences from travels, shows (mostly comedy), events (mostly sporting), eateries, genres and is always up for a good challenge. Going back to sports, the Knicks season is about to begin, and she has high expectations for this special team. Explaining her wouldn’t be complete without sharing the deep devotion that she has for reality TV. She is best known for crying during unprecedent moments while watching.

Her loved ones are the glue that has given her the courage to follow her own path, and the glue that has made these experiences possible. They have also taught her to not take life too seriously and to make sure to smile and laugh at least once a day. Nikkilee believes If she can do the latter, there can only be good days and hard days ahead.

INTERVIEW

confetti: Who or what inspired you to write?
Nikkilee Kozminsky (NK): I was someone who always wanted to meet the author. The person behind those incredible strung together words. The words that matter to me, they all still do whether fiction or nonfiction. With each book, more magic was brought into my life, and there would be a new author flap to read. As I got a bit older and my personal life had become heavier, the decade’s worth of faces and different whys gave me hope that I could write too. I didn’t have to be stuck in my thoughts and my emotions, I could have my own why and maybe just maybe in my wildest dreams, I could be that for one person.

confetti: How would you characterize your writing style?
(NK): I would characterize it as experimental. With (my) poetry there is no formula necessary, unlike other areas in (my) life. I need just a snippet of an emotion, an experience or an idea to run away with. Poetry is not prose so there’s nothing cooler than using grammar as I see fit to be the special effects to my piece. Many of my scribbles have been abandoned on loose sheets of white paper, a napkin or a post it (you don’t know when the aha moment is going to hit you) or are left deep within my thousands of phone notes. Whatever each’s fate may be, the ones that remain unkempt and unfinished too, refine my relationship and understanding of myself, our humanity and our language. My kaleidoscopic lens and curiosity will never keep me confined for too long. There’s a lot of poetic ground out there that I have yet to explore but intend to.

confetti: Who is your favorite poet and why?
(NK): My favorite poet is Robert Frost. He was the first poet I knew existed, and all these years later I will seek out his truths as he brings me into nature with him. Though his poems seem simple, what is hidden within, as I go deeper into the layers, shows his mastery. His comprehension and understanding of life and the way he conveys it has led to the greatest success to have created pieces with timelessness.

confetti: What is your favorite poem?
(NK): My favorite poem is “The World is Not Conclusion” by Emily Dickinson.

confetti: What are you currently reading?
(NK): I just picked up Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. I hope to start reading it in the next few days.

confetti: What are your three favorite books?
(NK): Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl, Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis are my top three favorite books.

confetti: What are your three favorite movies?
(NK): The Little Rascals, Pulp Fiction, and I’m caught between Top Gun: Maverick and Triangle of Sadness.

confetti: What is your favorite song of all time?
(NK): “It’s OK” by Nightbirde is probably my favorite song.

confetti: What advice would you give to young writers?
(NK): The saying goes that it takes 10,000 hours to master something. It never specified how many of those hours were going to feel cruel, difficult and frustrating. This is true for just about anything you try, but when you push through that you acquire life skills and develop perseverance that can be used in all areas of your life. If you choose writing, work at it and be a writer. It may end up being a hobby or it may result in you writing the novel of the century, no matter what success is a given. Success comes in a multitude of forms, money and fame are only two forms.

SHORT NON-FICTION

The Chair

My focus immediately shifted. They decided to sit in that chair; the decorish type: usually empty with no practical purpose. Everyone needs a break but there were much better seating choices around the bend in the fancier offices with comfortable couches. My fingers stopped typing and I swiveled to face them. I asked them how they were. Within seconds I learned their loved one had just been given one of those diagnoses you have trouble saying out loud. I saw the pain in their eyes, and I felt the fear as they shared more. I told them even if it had been brain cancer, the cancer is in the brain not the mind; this distinction being key to healing. We continued to exchange words, all whilst I searched around the filing cabinets in my thinking machine, trying to retrieve any inspirational snippets filed away from books I’ve read or something empowering from my own experience. Then I began to share one of my favorites about my former neighbor. A man in his mid-nineties now, who is battling many of the most brutish illnesses. Even though he goes to the doctor to treat and manage them—he doesn’t consider himself sick at all. I often found him outside pushing his lawn mower with all the strength in the world (weather permitting). I uttered a few more things before I suggested some books. By the time they were getting up from the chair, the tension had settled, and they appeared soothed. The calm energy really lingered behind. I looked at that chair in wonderment at least a dozen times before I locked my door for the day and began the walk to my car.

POETRY

Escape, escape
Cloaked in the dimmest of light
All tool and device hidden away
Danger in tow
While the others somehow lay
The page dries droplets clear
Take away the ink
Blood is no more

Only Bone

We go together
Like Tequila and Cocaine
Heavenly lethal

Fast, close all the blinds
Drape me in a mess of sheets
I love you for now

The sunrise forces
A devil of emotions
It was a mistake

Here we are again
Nights are turning into day
My mind is going

I want to leave now
But your demons consume you
I have to prepare

Let’s play your game, rock
The game I have always lost
My skin turns purple

I feel during the day
Apparently you do not
This pain is hellish

I am the scissor
You made me the assassin
I cut your heart out

Simple, twelve years spent
We do not go together
You are a dead~~beat~~

No Longer Paper

Can a butterfly go back
To cocoon?
Where it was mistaken
For “ready to bloom”

External pressures
A swing from an unexpected intruder
The hurdle of water pellets from harsh weather
Led to this young earthed winged thing
Entirely unsure and spooked by the air

Other creatures trying to prey but they—
They must have sensed something
The wind that would come and go
Shook the little creatures’ anatomy

It’s color a shade or two grayer
Forgoing nutrients yet remarkably nimble
The next few days spent trying to get back inside of something no longer useable
Until it just stood on top of it, waiting
Their wings remaining stain glassed, beautiful

Magnificent Angel