Pam Annas, a professor of English at UMass Boston, poet and a member of Somerville’s Bagel Bards won honorable mention for the Ibbetson Street Poetry Prize 2010. I decided to include it in this edition of the LYRICAL.

Saturday Sock Hop, 1959

The room was high with cool blues and fast rock.
In the pushed back living room
I was doin’ the bop swirly blue skirt, pink top
big-eyed girl wrapped in Chantilly lace
moving into a slow Kansas City swing.
Someone changed the stack of 45s.
Oh, that shark bites with his teeth, dear.
My stomach was cement my thighs were slick
my head a party balloon. Look,
scarlet splashes on the wood.

Susie’s mom gathered me up as I stared
at the floor, now a Pollock canvas in red.
You’ve started your period, she said.
She shoo’ed away the solemn girls outside
the bathroom door. Wetting a washcloth,
I wiped away the extravagant blood
while Fats Domino sang in the living room
about going to work on Monday.
Bass notes stroked the soles of my feet.
I had to get out there and dance.

– Pamela Annas