January 2021
Sterling Warner
jsterlingwarner@gmail.com
Bio Note: An author, poet, educator, my poems and stories have appeared in many international literary magazines, journals and anthologies, including The Fib Review, The Flatbush Review, Street Lit: Representing the Urban Landscape, Shot Glass Journal, and The Atherton Review. My most recent poetry collections are Edges and Rags & Feathers. My first collection of fiction, Masques: Flash Fiction & Short Stories was published in August 2020. A Washington based author, I currently enjoy writing, turning wood, participating in “virtual” poetry readings, and fishing along the Hood Canal.

Intriguing Antiquity

My niece introduced me to friends
as an intriguing antiquity, someone
brought into the world long before 
cell phones, twitter, texts, and rap;
her comrades bumped my elbow
with senior diffidence; they urged 
me share memorable moments 
(before I’d been born), navigating hardships 
during the 1929 stock market crash & kissing 
girls in Times Square following WWII.

“My uncle’s still an antique,” my niece
proudly assured. “He’s a baby-boomer— 
well over half a century old!” I nodded
winked & boasted I pounded flesh with JFK
as a youth, saw the Beatles in Shea Stadium, 
marched for civil rights, bathed three days in 
Woodstock music, lived through Watergate & 
protested the Vietnam War; clueless they queried, 
“Who? What? Where? & When?” Recasting
my life’s social milestones as lackluster stars.
©2021 Sterling Warner
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