Nancy Scott

FOR HAYDEN CARRUTH

I was told you walked
on stage wearing jeans,
drinking Coke from a can.
You read gravel-voiced,
dropping Vermont R's,
not trying for drama.
You read "Marge" and the one
about coffee pots and K-Marts.

I'd never heard a poet
with books (plural) published.
I was in the back still,
suddenly wanting something
I couldn't see,
having to be there for a class
I was sure wouldn't change me.
But there were your cows and saws
and puking on furniture
and all those poems about snow.

Nancy Scott's over 600 bylines have appeared in magazines, literary journals, anthologies and newspapers, and as audio commentaries. An essayist and poet, she has published three chapbooks. She won First Prize in the 2009 International Onkyo Braille Essay Contest. Recent work appears in Breath and Shadow, Contemporary Haibun Online, and Stone Voices.