Today we have another Mutabilis Press poet, Nikki Loftin. The story in her wonderful poem “Fireflies” reminds me a little bit of an Ani diFranco song. How well we can relate to this idea, that layered into a girl’s childhood is going to be longing, ambition, ingenuity, and the subtextual threat of a previous century’s notions about gender.

Fireflies 

I didn’t know how to shine
on my own back then:
drab, tangled,
brown as a berry,
stiff Tuffskin jeans all that kept me
from a boy’s bike-skinned knees.
How do you do that—
I asked the golden Jennifer Brown,
goddess of the home-perm, owner of
a genuine lava lamp,
her sweaty, glimmering skin
in the August heat
the closest thing to glamour I’d ever seen.
—how do you shine?
Like this: She caught
one struggling firefly
between thumb and finger
smeared it down her bare arm.
Running, she lit up the night
and I understood:
poor girls had to steal shine,
had to take it
from the air around us,
press it into our skin
and run fast, faster, across the
summer lawns, in between
the whooping boys
the beer-drinking men
shine fast as we could
without getting caught.

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Go to this month’s first Poem-A-Day to learn how to participate in a game as part of this year’s series. You can have just a little involvement or go all the way and write a cento. I hope you’ll join in!

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Nikki Loftin writes novels and poems in the Texas Hill Country, surrounded by dogs, goats, chickens, and rambunctious boys. Loftin’s novels for young readers include the award-winning Nightingale’s Nest and Wish Girl (Penguin Random House).