Earthquakes and Hummingbirds
Ever since I can remember,
I’ve been terrified of earthquakes.
Growing up just west of Detroit,
I had never felt one before,
but the cracks in the pavement
were all I could depend on.
How dare they think about tremoring
apart.
Hummingbirds’ wings beat 70 times per second
but my hummingbird heart beat
so much faster the day
you thought my name
for the very first time.
I swore the earth was rumbling
and splitting and swallowing up
my runaway feet, all my history
following them close behind.
The first time my father kissed my mother,
she said what the hell did you do that for?
and didn’t kiss him again ‘til he apologized.
The first time she told me that story,
I cried.
I have no idea what you’ll say the first time
I kiss you, but I want it like that.
If you’ll hate me, if you’ll hit me,
if you’ll blush ruby-throated red,
I want to find out.
And if the earth does open up,
and all of my feathers burst out of my chest,
I really wouldn’t mind.
By Darcy Vines
Biography:
Darcy Vines is a 20 year old free verse poet and freelance journalist who has been writing since the early days of her teenage angst. While occasionally covering feminist film festivals and office furniture conventions, she prefers to write about falling in and out of love too easily, gender and sexuality, and her dog named Huckleberry Finn. She cites Kurt Vonnegut, Betty Smith, Richard Siken, and Andrea Gibson as the loves of her literary life and her biggest inspirations. In her free time, she is a senior in the Insignis Honors Program at Aquinas College and studies English, journalism, and writing, all while staring down the barrel of law school applications. She is a staff writer for her college’s newspaper The Saint, and has been published in the first volume of Literary Sexts as well as the 26th and 27th editions of The Sampler. In 2014 and 2015, she was a top ten finalist from Aquinas College in the Academy of American Poets Student Poetry Prize. Someday, she hopes to write something that makes sense. Until then, you can find her anywhere you can also find a good dirty chai.