Geraldine Connolly
Geraldine Connolly was born in Greensburg, Pennsylvania in 1947. Her chapbook, The Red Room was published in 1988 and a full length collection Food for the Winter (Purdue University Press) appeared in 1990. Geraldine Connolly’s second book of poetry, Province of Fire, was published by Iris Press in December of 1998.
She has won many prizes for her work, including two NEA Creative Writing Fellowships, the Carolyn Kizer prize from Poetry Northwest, a Maryland Arts Council Fellowship, the Margaret Bridgman Fellowship to Breadloaf, and the National Ekphrastic Poetry Competition Prize. Her work has appeared in many magazines and journals including Poetry, Chelsea, The Gettysburg Review, The Georgia Review and Shenandoah.
She has won many prizes for her work, including two NEA Creative Writing Fellowships, the Carolyn Kizer prize from Poetry Northwest, a Maryland Arts Council Fellowship, the Margaret Bridgman Fellowship to Breadloaf, and the National Ekphrastic Poetry Competition Prize. Her work has appeared in many magazines and journals including Poetry, Chelsea, The Gettysburg Review, The Georgia Review and Shenandoah.
"The Summer I Was Sixteen"
The turquoise pool rose up to meet us,
its slide a silver afterthought down which
we plunged, screaming, into a mirage of bubbles.
We did not exist beyond the gaze of a boy.
Shaking water off our limbs, we lifted
up from ladder rungs across the fern-cool
lip of rim. Afternoon. Oiled and sated,
we sunbathed, rose and paraded the concrete,
danced to the low beat of "Duke of Earl".
Past cherry colas, hot-dogs, Dreamsicles,
we came to the counter where bees staggered
into root beer cups and drowned. We gobbled
cotton candy torches, sweet as furtive kisses,
shared on benches beneath summer shadows.
Cherry. Elm. Sycamore. We spread our chenille
blankets across grass, pressed radios to our ears,
mouthing the old words, then loosened
thin bikini straps and rubbed baby oil with iodine
across sunburned shoulders, tossing a glance
through the chain link at an improbable world.