This is a small poetry club that started as a poetry email exchange between two friends. Our goal is to read a poem everyday, and this blog is one way to help keep us accountable. There is only one valid rule in poetry club: there are no rules in poetry club. Read any poem, in any order, with any or no interactions. You decide. We only suggest you read poetry!
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23 Aug 2018: "Boy" by Nina Belen Robins
Boy
Somewhere there is a man
who bought
the VERY first ever issue of
Fantastic Four
from the awkward kid
up the street
for a nickel.
An awkward kid who didn’t have
Joe DiMaggio
baseball cards,
or signed baseballs
or Saturday afternoons
playing catch with his dad
like the guy he sold it to.
Just a bedroom
where he got to hang out
with Superman and
The Flash.
His mom and dad
downstairs
wondering,
what’s wrong with this boy
that he doesn’t have friends?
It must be the comics.
Better make them leave.
They didn’t see the belt
tied to the back of a chair
and around his neck
those three afternoons,
the crab apples
being thrown across
the yard at school.
Super heroes swooping down
To catch him.
Just a bookshelf
filled with comic books
emptied
in one afternoon.
Superman kicked out
of the bedroom,
The Flash sold
to the kid next door,
Fantastic Four
spread out on another table.
A boy clinging to a cliff.
A window.
Flashing a batman
light.
Fifty nickels in his pockets
dragging him down
toward the waves.
The depths we never see. The story behind the story...the darkness looking for light in something outward that seems to simple, but holds so much strength. The symbols of trust and power and saving grace to some are "awkward" playthings to others. How do we learn to build up and not tear down, to support and not fix, to have faith in others' self realization instead of judgment? How do we know when to help...and when to let leave?
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