Edited and Introduced by Wesley McNair, Maine Poet Laureate
Rachel Flynn of Gorham writes of today’s poem that memory is a slippery thing. “To this day I swear this alarming event happened,” she says, but her sister, the poem’s other participant, has her doubts.
Hunger for Something Easier
by Rachel Contreni FlynnI suppose now you’ll deny it all:
there was no wild pig in the woods,
hair up on his back like barbed wire,
eyes sunk and runny in crusted tunnels
along the snout. And we didn’t run
through red brambles, banging our legs
against stumps until we flung ourselves
into the thorny arms of an apple tree.
You’ll say we didn’t stay shoved up
against the bark breathing bright spice
and pitching green fruit to frighten away
the pig. You’ll never say you were afraid
or that I held you and you held me
and we crouched on the thin branches
until night slunk in, and a hunger
for something easier turned the pig away.
Rachel Flynn’s two full-length collections are Ice, Mouth, Song, which won the Dorset Prize, and Tongue, winner of the Benjamin Saltman Award. She has received fellowships from the NEA and the Illinois Arts Council.
Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. Poem copyright © 2010 Rachel Contreni Flynn. Reprinted from Tongue, Red Hen Press, 2010, by permission of Rachel Contreni Flynn.
Please note that the column is no longer accepting submissions; comments about it may be directed to special consultant to the poet laureate, Gibson Fay-LeBlanc, at mainepoetlaureate@gmail.com. Take Heart: Poems from Maine, an anthology collecting the first two years of this column, is now available from Down East Books.
