Tinkerbell flips-off a stranger
looking up her tutu
trades flight
for the joys of malicious thought.
Troll beneath the bridge
has lost his riddles;
leprechauns lost their gold
when they learned
about rainbows and refracted light,
and nobody noticed the princess
died a spinster,
fire-breathers flying into the sea,
hornless unicorns.
All fruitless jesters and the sun
hangs a stone,
but I have a raft, a faithful wolfhound
and the river still flows wild.
Alan teaches creative writing workshops in at-risk schools, and sex-ed at a UU church. A trustee of the Dallas Poets Community, he is a poetry editor for their literary journal, Illya’s Honey. Somehow he still finds time to ride his bike, wander in the woods, look at birds, and photograph dragonflies. Recently, his poems have appeared in Red Fez, Sentence, Main Street Rag, Borderlands, Sojourn, and the Texas Poetry Calendar (2009 & 2010). You can hear Alan read one of his poems in the September issue of Fogged Clarity.
© 2010, Alan Gann
Halfway Down the Stairs 