Fable by Nicole Callihan

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend May 14, 2015   Fable   Nicole Callihan

Our paper house sat on the banks of the red river   and though mother wasn’t like other mothers   I was like other girls trapped and lonely   and painting pictures in the stars. I was slick   with old birth or early longing, already halfway between   who I wanted to be and who I was. Our floors were made of flame   but there was no wind so we were as safe as anyone.   When spring came, I walked for a very long time   up I-35, and at the end of the road, I found a boy who placed earphones   onto my head and pumped opera into my body. I can feel it still.   Underneath that treeless sky, I was as changed as I would ever be.   Not even mother noticed.            Copyright © 2015 by Nicole Callihan. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “One afternoon, in Oklahoma, when I was a teenager, I sat in a field, and a boy put his Sony walkman on my head and blasted Andrew Lloyd Webber’s ‘Music of the Night’ into my ears. I had never heard anything so powerful. That moment made me completely reimagine everything I believed about art, beauty, and possibility.” —Nicole Callihan   Nicole Callihan is the author of SuperLoop (Sock Monkey Press, 2014). She teaches at New York University and lives in Brooklyn.   Photo credit: Hillery Stone Most Recent Book by Callihan   SuperLoop (Sock Monkey Press, 2014) "The Everyday Enchantment of Music" by Mark Strand "Song Out Here" by Juan Felipe Herrera "Theories of Time and Space" by Natasha Trethewey Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038