3 poems by Nadia de Vries

There Goes My Bead from a Stolen Necklace

Remember, when you were young and ugly

And they wielded your love like a punitive thing

Well, we’re all doomed now

Youth, like love, is a boring mystery

And only the ugly are free

My Cat Wants Me to Open the Door

This is the animal I met at the party party

That’s him, the one with the paper crown

He is not the man I want

But he’s the man I can afford –

Some of us will never feel the touch of

A tufted rug on our back

Some of us will never be loved by a fire fire

But anyone can wear white shoes in the mud

Anyone can dance a little jig

And get ruined for cheap

Let’s Go to the Bathroom, Baby

Did you see your favorite religious figure

All I saw myself was a lamp

With a dozen bugs inside it

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Nadia de Vries is a poet from Amsterdam. Her collected works, All My Dead Jesters, is coming out with Tenement Press in March 2026. Earlier titles are Know Thy Audience (2023), I Failed to Swoon (2021), and Dark Hour (2018). She also writes prose in Dutch.