Dear Badass,
On the field trip to Cold
Harbor, classmates loved
how you slipped away
from old lady Murphy’s
field trip. You rowed
the stolen boat out to
the sandbar, skulled
to the whale’s eye,
then, with oars locked, you
posed as if fishing,
catching the great joke
of the semester. The boat
rocked in the beached
humpback’s
wake, a dying
flotsam in the ebbing
of the bay. Each time
the tail crashed, the boat
spun. You grabbed the
gunnels, belly laughing
like nothing mattered.
Sincerely, Un-
Convinced
Al Ortolani is a teacher from Kansas. His writing has appeared in a number of periodicals, across the United States: New Letters, New York Quarterly, The English Journal, The Midwest Quarterly and others. He has three books of poetry, The Last Hippie of Camp 50 and Finding the Edge, published by Woodley Press at Washburn University, and Wren’s House, recently released from Coal City Review Press in Lawrence, Kansas. He is active with the Kansas City Writer’s Place and an editor with The Little Balkans Review.
