Monday, April 12, 2010

In His Pocket

My offering for this month's writing prompt at Poets Online.
You were to write from the perspective of a famous person's animal. I had a fun time with it.

IN HIS POCKET

I am famous, in a round-about way,
a fact that doesn’t square
with your knowledge
or your understanding
or your perceptions
about anything.

The things you think you know,
people told you,
or maybe you just saw them
from your own angle
and misunderstood.
Misinterpreted.

His hand in his vest,
for instance.

Baroque gentility from
a political genius.
Or so he thought.
As did you.
Unless you thought at all.
Then you would have called him a monster
with an ever-expanding empire.

Monstrous genius.
Brilliant monstrosity.

(Then, in the end,
after all the fanfare,
fighting every country you can find,
in wars named after you,
you’re known only for being short

with your hand in your vest.)

Gentility and war.
Such unusual bedfellows.

Like he and I.


The monster 

and the lizard in his pocket.

© 2010 Laurie Sitterding

Thursday, April 1, 2010

The Firecrackers

Okay, so maybe I have too much time on my hands during this Spring Break, but this video was amazing, and I watched it from start to finish - twice!



These girls are a jump rope performance group of 4th-8th graders known as "The Firecrackers." (Seriously... this footage is from a US Naval Academy performance on April 3, 2009, and I thought they were college cheerleaders or something. Some of these girls are nine or ten years old?!!)

Amazing! And I can barely flip the thing over my head and jump out of the way more than twice...