Samplings Of My Work
I Hate PoetsSneaking through stairwells,
Peering through stacks of books at ordinary people-- Staring with their pale poet eyes As they creep by, A six-pack of poems In each tiny, pink palm. |
Hmm. the start of something...
03/18/2013 Her name was Hazel Flynn. Some shortened it to ‘Haze,’ and that was okay with her—on the one hand, it implied the indistinct, maybe foggy state of the world when the sun meets the cold, atmospheric damp, and on the other there was the verb ‘to haze,’ as in ‘hazing rituals,’ which gave it a kind of urban toughness completely opposite from the first connotation. “Hazel” itself was okay—Mom had named her after the leader rabbit in Watership Down. Also, there was a Celtic tale about mythic hazelnut trees around a sacred pool and the nuts fell into the water and gave the fish wisdom. The Gaelic hero Fin McCool somehow absorbed the magic from one of these hazelnut-fish—they’d learned this years ago in Mr. Bracone’s Honors Myth and Lit class in sixth grade; ever since, her nicknames had included “Fin,” “McCool,” “Flynn McCool,” and “Fin Flynn.” It was good to have clever friends. On this day, Georgia and Reggie were coming the other direction toward the bus stop as usual, and Georgia called out, “you’re too cool, McCool, for a coat like the rest of us?” It was March in Tennessee and Saturday had been beautiful, nearly seventy degrees, so Hazel was holding on to the idea even into Monday morning, which was barely forty, and she’d worn her jean vest over a light sweatshirt. Both of the others were bundled tight. “Eyes toward summer,” Hazel said, squinting into the sun. “Only way to get it here.” Reggie grinned his large-toothed, large-lipped, handsome grin (he’d always been like some teen idol) and said, “I could dream me some summer about now… tell us what it’ll be like, Fin.” “We’ll get to the ocean and we’ll get jobs there, on the boardwalk jobs so we can see the ocean all day long even if we’re scooping popcorn or whatnot…” Georgia interrupted, always the practical one, “Myrtle? Charleston? Virginia Beach?” “Any beach will do,” Hazel said. The bus huffed and puffed its way around the corner and they sighed in unison. |