June 2024 - Featured Artist - Nikolai Ralowicz

About the Artist -

You may know Nikolai Ralowicz as one of the co-hosts for our Untitled Open Mic, but when she's not on stage at CoCo, she could be doing any number of things in any number of places. In addition to being a poet, Nikolai is a knitter, a grocery worker, and a soldier in the United States Army Reserves. Their body of work consists of pieces relating to gender and self-discovery, military experiences, the love of her home in New England, and drunken ramblings that were felt too strongly to simply ignore. Her pieces are often linked in collections or are tied together with prominent themes, creating a self-referential nature to their work. Nikolai has been writing poetry since high school and doesn't plan on stopping anytime soon, no matter where in the world she finds herself.

Additional Works -

Featured Poems -

Keychains by Nikolai Ralowicz

She's still alive, you know.
So is he.
So are they.
All of them, the past versions of me.
They're still alive.
They go with me everywhere.
Pieces of their souls are kept in my keychains.

My inner child is within the bunny my mother bought me from a Coach outlet in Maine when I was very, very small.
That very, very small version of me grew to be a bit bigger but still small and bought herself an "I Heart Jesus" mini lanyard with her own money at the Ocean State Job Lots in Tewksbury because they didn't have her name amidst the alphabetical selection offered.
She grew older, went to high school, made mistakes, and grew very sad but stayed alive despite the horrors and made friends.
One of those friends went to Ireland and bought her a glittery, spinning shamrock keychain.

She grew older and graduated and found a boy lost within the muscle fibers and brain matters she had grown to despise so much.
He tore through and found himself and found love.
His love asked him one day, "What's your favorite song?"
He replied, "Meltdown by Kagamine Rin."
Two weeks later, he received a package in the mail with a Spotify song code in his favorite color for that very same song
as a keychain.
He grew and shifted and found a cozy home in being perceived as neither here nor there on the binary spectrum.

They bloomed, they blossomed, oh, but their happiness only lasted so long.
They joined the army, shipped off to Basic Training, and although they knew it would be a very, very long time until they'd need to use it, they brought their house key with them anyway.
Eventually, the mental war was over, but they only had so much time until they'd leave again for a war more potent than Basic could've prepared them for.

In the months they had between training and deployment, they made the most of it.
They laughed, they sang, they traveled, they ate, they drank, they cried, they bled, and most tragically of all, they fell in love.
A very intense, unrequited love.

This love took them to New York City with a boy to whom they were willing to give the sun, moon, and stars.
He gave them a keychain.
A miniature Statue of Liberty dangling next to a black teddy bear with the words "New York" on its tummy.

After thanking the boy in his mother tongue with "Cпасибо, Бека", they told him that this keychain would go with them overseas.
And it did.
Along with the Coach Bunny,
The "I Heart Jesus" lanyard,
The glittery spinning shamrock,
The Spotify song code,
And the house key that I waited a very, very long time to finally use again.