Thursday 4 January 2018

Man with Earring

by Sarah Henry


A guy in the art history class
comes swinging down the hall
with a garnet earring blazing.
He discovers a pile of my poems
on the floor beside a door.
He picks up the whole thing
and begins to read.
The first poem is about him.
He is famous with me.
I have celebrated him
in passionate verse:
   “The sun sets on
         the garnet in your ear, etc.”
He staggers backward, amazed.
Recovering, he reads poem
after starry-eyed poem.
One of them has his name on it,
just as he was beginning to hope.
(This is called “foreshadowing.”)
 And he hasn't read my journal!

Behind the door,
my English teacher jogs papers
casually, and wonders what
a foolish schoolboy would make
of his female student's drivel,
if it penetrated his skull like
laser beams from outer space.
Love is mutual overvaluation
and light in space is bent.


* * * * *


Sarah Henry studied with two U.S. poet laureates at the University of Virginia. Today she lives near Pittsburgh, where her poetry has appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Pittsburgh Poetry Review. Farther afield, Sarah's work was published in Soundings East, The Hollins Critic, What Rough Beast and more, as well as six anthologies. CheapPop and Donut Factory included her humorous prose. Humor is very important to her. 

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