The Zingara Project

Tag: K.L. Frank

  • Having Her Say by K.L. Frank

    This girl,
    burns past me in the Student Union.
    Her passing flash awakens memories
    of days dragging around more heat
    beneath my jeans than my years
    should have stoked. I longed
    to inflame the sky with shibboleths,
    and watch them flash like fireworks.
    This girl,
    who can’t be hauling around
    more than twenty years, wears
    black sweat pants low slung.
    The waistband straddles
    the curve of her hipbone –
    a circus rider performing tricks
    for her audience. ‘PINK’ appliqued in pink
    outlined in pink sequins glitters
    across her butt (the space between ‘I’ and ‘N’
    floats over her coccyx) twitching
    as she walks away.
    This girl’s
    hips affirm louder as they sway
    than the slogans burning my lips.
    No matter the cause, her bumper sticker
    assumes mythic proportions
    against a load-bearing bumper.
    Be she touting a balm against violence,
    a signature hue, a favored singer, or
    support for breast cancer research,
    whatever her say,
    this girl
    has my vote.

    —

    Karin L. Frank is an award-winning author who lives on a farm in the Kansas City area. Her poems and stories have been published in a wide variety of venues both in the U.S.A. and abroad. Her first book of poems, A Meeting of Minds, was released in April, 2012.

  • A Wild Hair by K.L. Frank

    A few errant fibers bristle
    from the fallow field
    below my chin, waving goodbye
    to more subtle golden fuzz,
    that once hummed in spring’s
    soft hormonal breezes.
    In blatant disregard
    of harsh depilatories,
    bleaching creams, and tweezers,
    these outlaw strands fly free,
    battle banners
    raised above years ripened
    past their summer prime.
    For now is the autumn
    of more brutish shoots –
    stiff dark hairs that defy
    any downward drag
    and thrust outward, splayed fingers
    reaching toward dreams
    muscles fatigued in the fight
    against gravity can no longer grasp.
    These hairs mark my last attempt
    to step up to the edge of etiquette
    and shout a challenge,
    my final foray into impudence.

    —

    Karin L. Frank is an award-winning author from the Kansas City area. Her poems, including haiku, and prose have been published in both literary journals and genre magazines in the U.S. and abroad.