{the #MoSt Poetry: 15}

Prompt #15 (for December 29th): Another adapted Two Sylvias Press Advent Calendar prompt: Choose an event at which you were not present. This could be fictitious, historical, or actual. Write a poem that plays with the implications of not being present for an event. You weren’t there when Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty met. You were absent when Grandmaster Flash pioneered hip hop DJing or the Berlin Wall came down. You forgot and missed your anthropology final exam in junior college. Whether your poem is fanciful or serious, make it real. For extra credit, choose a line from a piece of fiction, a quotation from an historical time period, or something someone might have said that time you, you know, weren’t there…
Ready/Steady/Go…

flyspeck

i wasn’t there when
“no blondes allowed”
became a school-wide slogan.
(can you imagine
the chaos as fair-haired privilege
ran face-first into
a locked door?)
wish i could’ve been
a fly on the wall, but —

i wasn’t there
the week four blondes went non
opting out of anguish
while one bleached brighter —
defiant
wish i could’ve seen it:
grief in seven stages
bitter fear and panic seethed
some, in monstrous rage —
could even a fly on the wall
have caught it all?

i wasn’t there
as flashbulbs popped
recording how a change was wrought
in days to come, indelible
an institution altered.

wish i could’ve seen it, but
wrong how, wrong where, & years too late
did even the watchers
see how it went down?
wish i could’ve been
a fly on the wall.