Poetry Collection: Maybe Now Basketball
I was voted most improved on my hometown’s first official girls’ basketball team after Title IX legislation passed. I still can’t shoot or dribble very well but, instead, write about basketball, fiddling with words all day. The working title of this collection in progress is Maybe Now Basketball and is dedicated to the Milwaukee Bucks. Here are some published poems from this collection.
WWA Honorable mention!
This poem won honorable mention in the state-wide 2024 Jade Ring Contest sponsored by the Wisconsin Writers Association. So thrilled!
First Official Girls' Basketball Team: Kaukauna, WI 1972
Congress members Bayh, Green and Mink hero
words like sex and equal into civil law for us.
Daughters of Kaukauna farmers and millwrights
and doctors. Daughters born to crush the Jesus nothing
carbs Father whacks on our tongues. Mary Karen Sue Barb
Rose. Schooled to shuck flesh from bone by brothers and
cousins and boys next door, these girls jab float hesitate
explode. The boys I know lust and creep and teach me
hide not seek. Yet these girls endure my dud layups,
my tulle and elect me most improved.
First Official Girls' Basketball Team: Kaukauna, WI 1972
Congress members Bayh, Green and Mink hero
words like sex and equal into civil law for us.
Daughters of Kaukauna farmers and millwrights
and doctors. Daughters born to crush the Jesus nothing
carbs Father whacks on our tongues. Mary Karen Sue Barb
Rose. Schooled to shuck flesh from bone by brothers and
cousins and boys next door, these girls jab float hesitate
explode. The boys I know lust and creep and teach me
hide not seek. Yet these girls endure my dud layups,
my tulle and elect me most improved.
First Place-winning poem
This poem won First Place in the state-wide 2024 Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets Muse Contest. To see me read it at the WFOP annual conference go to: https://www.instagram.com/wisconsin_fellowship_of_poets/.
Transference
A flash of breast.
Next to my locker. I
didn’t mean to see. Creamy
bell of damp columbine.
Then quick towel
as curtain, as veil.
In the valleys where her
muscle joins bone, rivers.
Toes curl glossy still,
like pebbles,
underwater fruit
of wet sand.
I want her
so badly
for you. Locker
twenty-four.
Transference
A flash of breast.
Next to my locker. I
didn’t mean to see. Creamy
bell of damp columbine.
Then quick towel
as curtain, as veil.
In the valleys where her
muscle joins bone, rivers.
Toes curl glossy still,
like pebbles,
underwater fruit
of wet sand.
I want her
so badly
for you. Locker
twenty-four.