Nick Chiarkas
CONTACT:
1516 Grosse Point Drive
Middleton, WI 53562
608.444.6343
nick.chiarkas@gmail.com
BIO:
Nick Chiarkas is a frequent writers’ conference presenter, a Wisconsin Writers Association Board Member, and the author of nine traditionally published books: two award-winning novels, Weepers and Nunzio's Way, and seven nonfiction books. He grew up in the Al Smith housing projects on Manhattan's Lower East Side. When he was in the fourth grade, his mother was told by the principal of PS-1 that "Nick was unlikely ever to complete high school, so you must steer him toward a simple and secure vocation." Instead, Nick became a writer, with a few stops along the way: a U.S. Army Paratrooper, a New York City Police Officer, Deputy Chief Counsel to the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Deputy Chief Counsel for the President's Commission on Organized Crime; Chief Counsel for the USATBCB; and the Director of the Wisconsin State Public Defender Agency. On the way, he picked up a Doctorate from Columbia University, a Law Degree from Temple University, and was a Pickett Fellow at Harvard. How many mothers are told that their children are hopeless? How many kids with potential surrender to despair? That's why Nick wrote Weepers and Nunzio's Way — for them.
PUBLICATIONS:
Nick Chiarkas is the author of two award-winning novels, Weepers and Nunzio's Way, and seven nonfiction books.
Poetry
Grand Street Movement
If the theme of my childhood hummed
by so many hopeless spirits,
heard by me on summer evenings,
standing at the warbling door
on the steps of my tenement,
under the agonized fear and loudest stare of Louis Swallow,
who stands on sneaker feet on a neighboring stoop,
can become a jingle of gentle sounds,
a choir of misplaced harmony,
may not the composition of my boyhood
also, transpose and cause
the stale stench of the hallways
to adopt the aroma of oranges and corn,
the single bulb swaying in the doorway,
a mist of insects shifting below,
to become an almond pearl in whose crystal face,
the luster of emerald and gold is reflected,
while the green wormwood walls turn pistachio?
Is it also possible
that the degradation and despair,
the howling,
the banana basement under our window housing
the six-inch indigo spider
that clutched little Carol’s life as she cuddled in her cradle,
all become mellow as a mystery cellar
of collected pieces connecting places
with peculiar stamps amid alien postal points?
So sweet, my song, if this be so,
even in my own melodic slur.
My Wolf
In my shirt, I hide a hungry wolf,
she has devoured my heart,
it beats separately
within her, within me,
muffled points of sound.
Her restless growling
has become the rhythm of my life
her claws tear inner threads
her teeth strike shimmering wells of fever
my brow is wet
and I am cold with shivering
Lovely Andúile, I know you
will leave nothing intact,
yet I'll not undo
one button to remove you.
Instead, I’ll abide each day,
finding solace in the shadows.