David B. Axelrod
USA
| Dr. David B. Axelrod,
Suffolk County, Long Island’s Poet Laureate, maintains a
website at "http://www.writersunlimited.org/laureate"
www.writersunlimited.org/laureate where he offers his
services to the public. Dr. Axelrod has published in
hundreds of magazines and anthologies. He is the recipient
of three Fulbright Awards including his being the first
official Fulbright Poet-in-Residence in the People’s
Republic of China. The New York Times described him as “A
Treat!” He has shared the stage with such notables as Louis
Simpson, Galway Kinnell, X. J. Kennedy, William Stafford,
Robert Bly and Allen Ginsberg and performed for the United
Nations, the American Library Association and hundreds of
venues. He has been translated into fourteen languages. |
MY FINGER SPLIT OPEN
My ring finger, only I don’t
have a wedding ring. I beat it
flat with a hammer after we split.
I was reaching for a splitting awl,
hammering two-foot logs to save
on oil bills that would bust my budget.
It’s a fourteen-pound hammer which,
if I don’t learn to swing lefty, is building
the muscles on my right side into a hump.
When I bent down to grab the splitter
a sharp shard knifed me to the bone,
a gash that bled so much the log turned red.
I wrapped the gash tight in a pocket tissue,
ignored the pain, but if I hadn’t split up,
I’d have money enough to heat the house.
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