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video
See YouTube video of Chicago poet Janet Kuypers reading her poem “Earrings Glow on the Beach” at Lake Michigan 9/2/19 in Kenosha, WI (this video was filmed from a Panasonic Lumix T56 camera).
video
See YouTube video of Chicago poet Janet Kuypers reading her poem “Earrings Glow on the Beach” at Lake Michigan 9/2/19 in Kenosha, WI (this video was filmed from a Panasonic Lumix T56 camera; Cyan filter).
video
See YouTube video of Chicago poet Janet Kuypers reading her poem “Earrings Glow on the Beach” at Lake Michigan 9/2/19 in Kenosha, WI (this video was filmed from a Panasonic Lumix T56 camera; Sepia Tone filter).
video
See YouTube video of Chicago poet Janet Kuypers reading her poem “Earrings Glow on the Beach” at Lake Michigan 9/2/19 in Kenosha, WI (this video was filmed from a Panasonic Lumix T56 camera; Threshold filter).
video See a YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her poems “Earrings Glow on the Beach” (written 8/30, on and for National Beach Day) and “Eleven and Two, plus Eight” (for 8/24, Pluto Demoted Day), read from the Janet Kuypers poetry book “Every Event of the Year (Volume Two: July-December)” on 7/23/20 during the Virtual Austin Poetry Society New World Poetry open mic (video from a Panasonic Lumix 2500 camera; posted on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and Tumblr).
video See a Facebook live video stream of Janet Kuypers reading her poems “Earrings Glow on the Beach” (written 8/30, on and for National Beach Day) and “Eleven and Two, plus Eight” (for 8/24, Pluto Demoted Day), read from the Janet Kuypers poetry book “Every Event of the Year (Volume Two: July-December)” on 7/23/20 during the Virtual Austin Poetry Society New World Poetry open mic (this video filmed from a Samsung S9 camera).

Earrings Glow
   on the Beach

Janet Kuypers
8/30/18, written on
National Beach Day

Back when I was a little girl,
My daddy took me to Las Vegas
back in the day, shortly after
their dollar slot machines dropped
winnings in 80-year old silver dollars.
I was too young to gamble,
and even though daddy did,
when I saw a scantily-clad cocktail
waitress hawking trinkets on a tray,
I saw long sliver stick earrings
with LED lights at the end...
so I asked in that high-pitched voice
only a little girl could give
when asking for something,
daddy, of course, obliged.

We got out of the desert,
and I loved those earrings,
no one else had anything like them,
so when I joined friends
to a cottage in Michigan
at a beach on Lake Michigan,
for a weekend-long role-playing
“Clue” adventure weekend,
I had to wear my red LED earrings
(even if they didn’t match
the Clue character I played).

The first night we arrived
Once at the cottage along the beach,
we all instinctively ran to the sand.
Some of the rebellious teenagers
smoked their clove cigarettes
with red embers burning
out on the top of a dune,
but I just sat there, happy to coexist
with glowing red lights
on my earrings instead.

The cool thing was that
two cool boys approached us
to ask what those glowing
red lights were they saw --
not the cigarette embers, mind you,
but the one-of-a-kind earrings
I brought from the desert
to this shoreline on the beach.
I continued to dig
my toes into the sand
and smiled, realizing
how perfectly so many
different elements
can come together
on a beach like this,
even if it was originally
only originally coming
to play out a Clue mystery.
But really, there’s
no mystery here
when you breathe in
the fresh water air,
feel the beach sand
through your fingers and toes,
and look up from those earrings
to see hundreds of new stars
twinkling back at you
in the night sky.


Copyright © Janet Kuypers.

All rights reserved. No material
may be reprinted without express permission.



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