Hairy Arms

Hi! This year (2022), I've decided to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It's all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I'm scared about still include:

1. My spoken voice
2. My raw poems.

Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!

"Hairy Arms" for Sarah At McKelvie Middle School, my friend, complained about the dark hair on her arms, comparing her arms to mine and another friend's. We sat outside on the field in seventh grade, lined up, ready for our early man unit and she was almost crying. She hated her hairy arms, called them names. And when I told her how beautiful she was (easily the prettiest girl in our grade), she sighed and said, “You’ll never have to deal with arms like these.” And she was right. *** DNA is a messy thing and so are family histories. Mine is just as messy as everyone else’s. My hairless arms tell secrets about paternity my mom didn't want anyone to know. *** The poet is meant to create sense from life, resonance. Linkages. *** My poems are messy things. Black lines and swoops on white spaces. But maybe they can be beautiful like the hair on Sarah's arms.

Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in Carrie, so thank you for your support.

The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.

While Carrie only posts poems weekly here, she has them (in written form) almost every other weekday over on Medium. You should check it out!

https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection