Ellaraine Lockie is widely published and awarded as a poet, nonfiction book author and essayist. Tripping with the Top Down is her thirteenth chapbook. Earlier collections have won Poetry Forum’s Chapbook Contest Prize, San Gabriel Valley Poetry Festival Chapbook Competition, Encircle Publications Chapbook Contest, Best Individual Poetry Collection Award from Purple Patch magazine in England Competition, and the Aurorean’s Chapbook Choice Award. Ellaraine teaches writing workshops and serves as Poetry Editor for the lifestyles magazine, Lilipoh.
~
Taking Issue with Marcelino
who suggests a boy flex his forearm
instead of shoulder when he fingers a girl
A forearm, like he’s pulling a calf
Let there be light in the darkened corner of the barn
Where a girl waits for the haystack-lush
breeze-through-chokecherry-bush touch
from her first boyfriend
A boy who perhaps works at the post office
where he spits on a finger
and pets a stamp onto an under-paid envelope
Or maybe his mother introduced him
as a child to the art of fingerpainting
When he learned to ease fire engine red
into the pink of an earthworm’s crawl
Into flush of cheek and slush of melting snow
with the cursive of one slow O after another
Or let’s say he plays Chopin late at night
after his garage band practice
Taps the keys with feather tips
How he holds the hammer inside
Turns the slams against his heart into a prayer
Like a priest saves himself for Christ
Knowing the sacrifice will be rewarded in the end
The way lightning explodes over the night prairie
Blesses both the boy and girl through the one window
and blinds even the stars with its brilliance
~First published in Ibbetson Street~
ISACOUSTIC* 