Casino Lounge Gospel

Poems by Nicole Sarrocco
Illustration by Chuk Baldock

New Pacific Press Chapbook Series #2
First Printing/February 2021/200 copies
Second Printing/March 2022/200 copies

5.5 x 5.5 inches, black & white printing, 48 pages

About the author: Nicole Sarrocco lives in Piittsboro, NC. Most of these poems appeared in SPREAD: The Monthly Journal of Poetry

From the Introduction, by the publisher:

"...I had been searching for a manuscript for the second chapbook when a friend in North Carolina contacted me. He said he had just bought a house in a part of Franklin County called The Harrican and found, in the attic, a hatbox full of poems written by a woman named Nicole Sirrocco. He said they were pretty good and would I like to take look. I agreed and he mailed them to me, hatbox and all. Some were typed on a typewriter and some were done on an old dot matrix printer. But many others were handwritten on a steno pad, old Food Lion receipts and even on the back of a birthday card from a couple named Agnes and Joe. After deciphering the handwriting and discarding the partials and the water-damaged pages that were illegible, I had these 31 poems.
Nicole, if you read this, here is a chapbook of your wonderful poems."

Sample poem:

Rising of the Lights

Scrounging through a hole in the door
the passage smaller every time
you dream it too but mine is underwater
it's not a hard one to fathom
I ask you who is there
in your sleepwalk
who coaxes you through
is it a stranger or someone
you loved
they already on the other side
is it only a voice through the chamber
the airlock between you the only barrier
the promise of arms to sweep you
into reunion how bright
is your body beneath you
when your shoulder catches just before
the rush snatches you across
into unutterable happiness
the breath you won't be able to catch
the peace shrunken to a token
when you wake up alone
in a room where the exits lead out, not in