Hollow Bottles

"Yurcaba’s poetry takes us on a musicality ride of memory in Hollow Bottles; carefully taking each line to show us how to dance, play instruments as gently as one can at seventeen, and how to undress a room with a glance of a past lover’s voice, playing us right into Morrissey’s weepy words, puts us right into his hands, where, we are already putty-- Why do you come here? Why do you hang around? and then, pulls us back, yet again... Friendship’s ungraspable entity with melodrama’s orison Oh, Jesus Christ. The idea of never speaking to you makes me sick. . Please…don’t go. One can take bottles, empty to half empty and blow softly or harshly to re-create sounds, as did in some of our family’s old country days—some call it junk percussion, possibly a throw away or discarded mood changer, but Nicole Yurcaba takes it from her recycled adoration bin, and gives us words to reflect upon. Especially to one who's not familiar with Ukrainian practices, we learn in "Dancing to Ruslana in the Barn"... a thundering toe-heel stomp on dusty wooden floorboards, arms spread like falcon’s wings; a right lower leg swung swiftly to meet the left knee; (This is how Dedushka danced) knees then bent, launching the flight of an attempted (and failed) Cossack’s high jump… It makes you, well me, want to find a record store and revisit each note, each lyric, and the artists that have left lasting impressions on Yurcaba."