I have talked about Poetry in Plain Sight (PiPS) before, but I’m mentioning it again because the submission period is coming up during the month of September. Begun by the Winston Salem Writers’ Group and now facilitated by the NC Poetry Society, the program selects 4 poems per month to be printed on large, attractive posters and placed in selected shop windows in host cities around NC. I think 17 cities now participate, including Apex, Asheville, Boone, Burnsville, Winston-Salem, Carrboro, Charlotte, Durham, Greensboro, Greenville, Hendersonville, Hickory, and more.
As Host City Coordinator for Hickory, I recently delivered the poems for July, and using the titles of the selected poems, wrote the following poem as well:
Chores
fr. Latin, chorus, those who do the work, who carry the play forward
(titles from Poetry in Plain Sight selections July 2025)
I rise from my knees, not from prayer,
not from planting autumn blooming crocuses,
but from fixing a table bending beneath
the weight of too many ovens. Still,
at my age, any rising is a good thing.
In the heat of early July in the South
I head out to make my monthly delivery
of poems. One called “Tomato Sandwich,”
transforming the taste of summer into art,
for the front window of my coffee shop.
One called “Hum,” for the community theater,
about a boy remembering the sound
of his father blowing on his face to cool him
off in a Louisiana Church on Sundays.
Another called “Wild Women,” for the wine shop,
about girls being told they couldn’t be cowboys,
who then hitched up their chaps and spat on the ground.
And one for the library, called “Song
to a Little Tree under the Eve of Terminal 2
at Raleigh Durham International Airport,”
just about a tree in an unlikely place refusing not to grow.
My thanks to Paul Jones, Luke Hankins, Maria Rouphail, and Erika Takacs for their wonderful titles. For submission guidelines or more information, go to https://www.ncpoetrysociety.org/pips/. And I hope to see you in the windows soon!