Red Flag Poetry
  • Home
  • About
    • Contact
    • Editorial Staff
  • Poetry Express
  • Subscribe
  • Submit
  • Store
    • RFP Gear
  • Meet the Artists
  • Use Your Words
  • Home
  • About
    • Contact
    • Editorial Staff
  • Poetry Express
  • Subscribe
  • Submit
  • Store
    • RFP Gear
  • Meet the Artists
  • Use Your Words
Search by typing & pressing enter

YOUR CART

Picture
Red Flag is so much more than just postcards!

We also publish digitally, every other month, via the Poetry Express. This format gives us the freedom to publish work that won’t fit on a postcard but still needs to be shared with the world.

On this page, you will find all of our past Poetry Express poems with information about their authors. If you like these poems and want to get even more poetry delivered directly to your mailbox, head over to our subscribe page!

2/20/2018 Comments

Kayle Lathrop: "Midwest Ballerina"

Midwest Ballerina
They say it comes with the territory: sixteen years of dancing, 
countless rolled ankles, two broken bones, an achilles with chronic tendonitis.

A small price to pay for a principal role in Don Quixote, I thought
at the time. Being able to achieve the perfect sissonne

to feel like Svetlana Zakharova in that very moment. Ruining your back,
pinching nerves and over-extending muscles, during the Arabian variation

from The Nutcracker, but continuing on nevertheless, never batting an eye.
Every time the rain falls, and the storms roll across the corn fields

my bones, all nineteen years of them, ache with arthritis.
But they ache, too, with a longing for a stage to stretch them on,

to yet again feel alive in front of an audience. And part of the territory
is the end of the territory, the day you hang up your pointe shoes,

your body too bruised & battered to continue, though some
do not decline the hip replacement, the ankle surgery.

Each morning you wake to do the chores, you'll see those old,
torn up pointe shoes hanging effortlessly above a shelf of photos,

when you graced the stage in those satin traps.
You'll throw on a flannel, jeans, and work boots, and trade the lessons

taught by the stage for those taught by the Midwest:
Learning to glide like the red-tailed hawk I see daily, how to glissade

almost effortlessly. Like that hawk, I am unsure where this life will take me,
but somehow I always end up in the same place, like clockwork.

I learned from the river to never give up, to hold my ground,
to be strong and independent, from the hog, its teeth seized

on my steel toed boots, to reach for what I want, because that's all it takes.
And the endless fields, the endless roads, the ever present stars

gleaming down above on any given summer night, to never give up,
​even after giving up, to reach for a faith that's just beyond my belief.
Picture
Kayle Lathrop was born and raised in Monmouth, Illinois. She currently attends Valparaiso University where she is pursuing a degree in Public Health while writing, dancing, and drinking coffee. A lot of her inspiration comes from her ballet background and her rural Illinois hometown. You can follow her on Twitter @kayledl15, or, you can also keep up with her on her blog. 
Comments

    Authors

    All Rights revert back to author one year after initial publication.


    Archives

    July 2022
    April 2022
    August 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    November 2020
    October 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    November 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    May 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015

    Categories

    All Poetry

    RSS Feed

Picture
submit