Friday, August 30, 2013

Poem of the Week: Kathi Wolfe

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Blind Ambition 

I'm in my seat,
averting my eyes,
those funhouse mirrors,
from the numbers
swimming across the blackboard.

Figures are slimy
monsters who slobber
all over your picnic
basket on the beach.
I grab my white cane
and run away from them.

"If you were Helen Keller,"
my teacher says,
"you'd get a gold
star in arithmetic."
Her voice sounds
like she's just
met Prince Charming.
"You would be a perfect
young lady," she says.

I don't want
to make friends
with fractions
or skip rope
with multiplication tables.

I want to chase
lightning bugs,
pull my brother's hair,
open up all the presents
before the company
comes on Christmas morning.

I don't want to be any
Goody-Two-Shoes Helen.
I want to baptize
my new sneakers
in the mud.


-Kathi Wolfe


From The Green Light (Finishing Line Press, 2013)
Used by permission.


Kathi Wolfe is a writer and poet. Her chapbook The Green Light was published by Finishing Line Press in Summer 2013. Wolfe is a contributor to the anthology Beauty Is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability, an American Library Association 2011 Notable book. Her chapbook Helen Takes the Stage: The Helen Keller Poems was published by Pudding House in 2008. Wolfe's poetry has appeared in Gargoyle, Beltway Poetry Review and other publications. In 2008, she was a Lambda Literary Foundation Fellow. Wolfe is a senior writer/columnist for the arts magazine Scene4 and a contributor to The Washington Blade.

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