Jean Anne Feldeisen
Like Boys
Angry and hard the heat that day
when I drove the empty road
past wild blueberry fields
lined with goldenrod.
Standing on the gravel side
of the road was a boy,
age twelve, or so it seemed,
one foot on, one off his skateboard.
He wore cutoff jeans,
sneakers with no socks,
his chest bared, glistening
in the glare of the sun.
I wondered what made him decide
to ride the hot black asphalt
of the empty road. Not a single
girl to impress or another kid to challenge.
I flirted with this fellow-feeling—
remembered riding my bike
down the long hill of Brook Lane,
on a hot day, the urge to lift my shirt
over my head and fling it
as I whizzed past the neighbors
my feet on the handlebars
wind in my hair, for the thrill
of being a girl in the sun.
Back to Issue XIV…
Lynne Ellis writes in pen. Their words appear in Poetry Northwest, The Seventh Wave, the North American Review, the Missouri Review, Bracken, and many other beloved journals and anthologies. Winner of the Washburn Prize, the Perkoff Prize, and the Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Prize, she believes every poem is a collaboration. Read their digital chapbook, "Future Sketchbook," online at Harbor Review. Ellis holds a Certificate in Editing from the University of Washington, serves as a poetry reader at Crab Creek Review, and is Publishing Editor of Tulipwood Books, a developmental-editing press. She wants to work with you.
