Author: ROMPoetry

The Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry is an interactive museum where the common person and poetry meld. ROMP is a 501(c)3 tax-exempt organization.
Poems

27 Years

ROMPoetry

NelsonMandela5Nelson Mandela, leader of the movement to end South African apartheid, is released from prison after 27 years on February 11, 1990.

When I was 27, I was pregnant with my son,
And in the third trimester, I went to England,
Experiencing Stratford on Avon, where he heard
His first Shakespeare play—Much Ado About Nothing—
And toured Roman baths and experienced the result Continue reading “27 Years” →

Events, Musings

Don’t Fear the Poem

ROMPoetry

fearDon’t fear the poem.
Baby take my hand.
We’ll be able to fly.
Don’t fear the poem.
La la la la la la la . . .

Apologies to Blue Oyster Cult. When I tell people I am a poet,

A. They run screaming far to uninhabited lands.

B. They want to share their own poems with me.

C. They make a hand gesture to ward off evil.

D. They stare blankly and then change the subject. Continue reading “Don’t Fear the Poem” →

Poems

To Embrace Her Slippers

ROMPoetry

Amag postcard Co, Germany, C1920s“Will did not know what to say, since it would not be useful for him to embrace her slippers, and tell her that he would die for her . . . it was clear that she required nothing of the sort. . .” –Middlemarch, George Eliot

Yet why not embrace her slippers?
Why not risk the possibility
Of saliva trickling upon satin
Or tapestry or whatever blessed
Shoe covering one might wear
In a 19th century novel weighing
In at 4.2 pounds, 852 pages? Continue reading “To Embrace Her Slippers” →