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Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry: Gold Stars
Edited and introduced by Wesley McNair, Maine Poet Laureate
Gold stars are normally awarded for good behavior, but not always. This week’s poem by Rachel Flynn of Gorham explains.
Gold Stars by Rachel Contreni Flynn
It was forbidden to touch the Hummels in my aunt’s pretty house, arranged just so and shut in the glass cabinet, pigeon-toed, rosy-faced, holding kittens or balloons, their porcelain bellies bulging under pinafores and overalls…and it was wrong to kiss the high-school janitor after track practice against the concrete wall in the band room vestibule where a fake velvet blanket draped the old upright piano, and a long row of trombones tilted in their shiny black cases…but these were the gold stars I gave myself when I thought no one was watching and nothing would get broken, and I was brilliant: easingthe little brass latches and reaching in.
Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. Poem copyright © 2005 Rachel Contreni Flynn. Reprinted from Ice, Mouth, Song, Tupelo Press, 2005, by permission of Rachel Contreni Flynn. Questions about submitting to Take Heart may be directed to Gibson Fay-LeBlanc, Special Consultant to the Maine Poet Laureate, at mainepoetlaureate@gmail.com or 207-228-8263. Take Heart: Poems from Maine, an anthology collecting the first two years of this column, is now available from Down East Books.