poems by
Debra A. Daniel
Poetry book, 42 pages, $8 cover price
ISBN: 9781599481661
Released: 2008
* * * Selected for publication as a result of finishing as a finalist in the
2008 MSR CHAPBOOK CONTEST * * *
$8.00
In stock
Poetry book, 42 pages, $8 cover price
ISBN: 9781599481661
* * * Selected for publication as a result of finishing as a finalist in the
2008 MSR CHAPBOOK CONTEST * * *
Debra A. Daniel was named SC Arts Commission Poetry Fellow in 2006 and in 1994. She was awarded the Guy Owen Prize in 2002. Her work has been published in darkskymagazine.com, Kakalak, Emrys Journal, Pequin.org, Inkwell, Southern Poetry Review, Tar River Poetry, Gargoyle, The Poetry Society of SC Yearbook, The State, the Charleston Post and Courier, Inheritance: Selections from SC Fiction Project Winners, and Twenty SC Poetry Fellows. On the same day she retired from a career teaching elementary school, she accepted a marriage proposal. Now she sings, plays mandolin and percussion in an eclectic acoustic band, and is living happily ever after in Columbia, SC, with her musician husband, Jack McGregor.
If, in first date darkness,
watching Myrna Loy and William Powell,
he reached for her hand.
Did she think him fresh to attempt a kiss
and turn from his lips?
If, dancing at Twin Lakes,
he held her close enough
to smell the crescent of gardenias
curving the nape of her neck.
If, on their wedding day, his sergeant
in a stiff uniform and her sister,
sworn to secrecy, stood up for them
in an army chapel,
or if, in a polished wood office
only city hall strangers witnessed their joining.
Did she, in a borrowed linen suit weep
while he fumbled for his handkerchief,
tilted her chin to make a bashful dab at her tears?
If, with a twenty-four hour pass,
they honeymooned in passionate hurry,
woke to wrenching good-byes.
In a Pullman berth, spooning
through a Tennessee night, did he ease
her sleep with stories of his childhood.
Did each, aware of the other,
beseech a friend for a proper introduction?
Was it his hands, the dance of her hair,
his angled smile that caused one to notice the other?
It isn’t the not knowing that troubles me,
now that I’m past fifty, my own long-ago marriage
a chest stacked with starched regrets.
It’s that they weren’t desperate to share
the legends of their joining.
It’s the not telling.
That is what leaves me stranded.