This blog is devoted to a select group of poets. We're starting with poets from the Ann Arbor area, but, hey, if you're from Detroit, Grand Rapids, Saginaw or the Upper Peninsula, then that is okay, too. We've even been so generous to accept poets from other parts of the USA and the entire country of Canada!
Our goal is to provide you with a prompt every day from which you are to garner inspiration and submit a poem. How to submit will be very easy. Just put your poem or short story in the comments section and hit post. You may not immediately see your post, but it is there under the "Comments" section. You may need to click on "Comments" to see your poem. It is there on another page.
You may need to have a Gmail account to post in the comments section. Most of you do have Gmail, but for those of you that don't it's extremely worthwhile to open up one now! That way you've got a chance to get your work out there in the world.Today's poem or short story prompt is the world "succeed/success."
The True Nature of My Bones
ReplyDeleteFew people can hold a basketball in one hand. My father could. It was scary to see him do this for some reason. I'd watch his long thick fingers hold that ball and it was like an alien had entered his palm and wrist and five fingers and that alien had magnetized rubber instead of metal. How else could such a grip be explained?
While holding a basketball wasn't a problem, holding a bowling bowl was. There was no bowling ball with a hole deep enough or a spread wide enough to contain his thumb, index and middle finger. Until he could afford a custom ball, he made do with the alley's ball. When he bowled it didn't look right. His hand would hunch over the ball like there might be a small cage under it. A small cage that might hatch an egg or a large spider or hold a rabbit's foot in it for luck.
My father was so tall as a teenager that he won a sneaker contest sponsored by Converse. The contest: "Who Can Fill Bill Russell's Sneakers?" Bill Russell was reported to have stood at least 6'10" tall (some reports have him as tall as 7'2") and had very large feet. I remember my grandmother, my father's mother, saying a size 22, but that can't be real. But my father won the contest. At age 19, he wore a size 17 shoe. He won a year full of Converse sneakers.
One of my deepest physical desires when I was a child was that I grow up to marry a man with small feet. At age 13, I wore a size ten shoe and was well on my way to an adult size eleven. I wasn't going to be a basketball player and there weren't any contests for women with big feet (even if there had been, I wouldn't have entered).
Years later, I think of my father and I think of me and I wonder why I was so afraid to be big. Why did I fear my fingers and feet would overtake me and have me stand out in a crowd? I tried to stay small for many years--a long time--denying my bones and true nature.
Catherine Powers
Copyright 2013
August 20, 2013