Two Quarters Gets You An Original Piece of Gumball Poetry at St. Elmo’s
April is National Poetry Month, and the poems are all creations of Del Ray poets.
Alexandria, VA – Look no further at St. Elmo’s Coffee Pub in Del Ray if you’re looking for something sweet to go along with your latte. It’s a gumball machine full of poems by local poets. Each poem costs 50 cents.
The project is the work of Renee Adams, the creator of the annual Del Ray Poetry Fence. Incidentally, April is National Poetry Month!
More: Renee Adams Celebrates 10 Years of her Poetry Fence
“I’ve been very pleased with how the gumball poems have been moving in just a couple of days… although I’ll have to start preparing more poems if they move really fast,” Adams told The Zebra.
After inserting two quarters, The Zebra received the following poem:
The Sweet Spot
By Renee Adams
Where my sons’ shoes puddled
just this side of the coffee table
so their shoeless, socked feet
were permitted to slip under their bodies
or stretch out when lying on the sofa
or any of the upholstered chairs.
They slipped them off as soon
as entering the room;
the rule: no shoes on furniture.
They sloughed off like skins of snakes,
the unsullied socks emerging from their outdoor skin.
That same place is empty now
of shoes, but filled with toys.
Not theirs, as they have grown and gone,
but fuzzy mice, a catnip fish,
a long and snaky, fur-and-feathered-on-a-stick
are loveys of my cats.
The toys are tossed and tortured
and batted far a-room,
but always I return them to the sweet spot,
the resting place of memories
and the beloved present.
DON’T MISS: Alexandria Welcomes Its Next Poet Laureate
