October 2021
Bio Note: I'm a retired high school teacher, born in Cape Town and raised in London, but a resident since 1979 of Richmond, Va. because while living in France I married an American girl who abruptly announced "I'm going home, are you coming?" I'm brown and triracial; I like to write across the aesthetic map in terms of both genre and voice; my three books since 2019 are a full length play, a poetry collection, and a hybrid non-fiction/photography tome about the 2020 Lost Cause statuary removals. (The photographs will go on display this month at our Black History Museum.)
I Wouldn't
I wouldn't, love, if I were you.
Touch leads so fiercely to touch.
Your pigheaded heart knows as much.
And you shouldn't. You do know that too?
I didn't, back when I was you.
Touché: it's made me who I am.
Do I praise myself with a faint damn,
Sometimes, thinking back there? I do.
Perhaps the ones who most thrive
Are those who learn young how to take
The measured risk. Or the charmed kids
Who calculate less, but survive—
By luck—the hog-hearted mistake
Of touching whatever touch bids.
©2021 Derek Kannemeyer
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author (email address above) to tell her or him. You might say what it is about the poem that moves you. Writing to the author is what builds the community at Verse Virtual.
It is very important. -JL