Jonie McIntire       

Floor Boards*
I walk my feet flat
down the stairs,
the feel of each grain
on my skin.
The boards creak,
breathing, tickling
light at my arches.
I know this wood,
warm and solid,
where the boards shift,
where the slightest touch
groans; as my toes lick
the familiar path
through the front room.

 

Black-eyed Susan**
She continues.
A black-eyed susan
among the tall grass,
the reedy stems.
She is the insistence
of color among the rough.
The sun rises
over the razed
schoolhouse of anger
and she lifts her head
to the sun each time,
her roots curled
among rocks, clay,
among soil loosened
over time.

 

Unbroken***
Between grass and blacktop,
we chalk hopscotch,
shovel snow mixed with salt,
play the neighbor games, as

our union mothers leave
lists of how to carry on,
tell us not to worry cracks –
in Toledo, we are unbroken.

 

*previously published online in Red Fez, Issue 49, September 2012…
**Based on a poem by the same name which was previously published online in Red Fez, Issue 35, June 2011…
***Winning poem in the Toledo Arts Commission Poetry Sidewalks II, August 2014 (printed in sidewalk between Scott High School and UAW building on Collingwood Avenue…

 

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Jonie Mc Intire

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Bio: Jonie was born a poor white girl in North Hills, Pittsburgh. She moved and grew up, but the rest stayed the same. In elementary school, she wrote a poem that the teacher thought was good enough that she plagiarized it. To this day, Jonie is suspicious of her own actions. In a visual art class, perhaps a year later, a teacher told her that “art just isn’t for everyone. You seem really good at math.” But she’s a defiant cuss, so she just kept writing, here and there – a sizzling double-dactyl, a silly sinus-y limerick, an honest piece about tampons or death or anything in between. Every once in a while, she gets published in print or on-line. More often, she gets together with poets and neighbors, spreading the good word of good words.

Jonie’s poetry books are Not All Who Are Lost Wander (Finishing Line Press 2016,) and Beyond the Sidewalk (NightBallet Press 2017.)