Jennifer Hambrick
Footloose
Originally released in O:JA&L in 2020, this haibun is included in Hambrick’s new book Joyride, now in release from Red Moon Press.
he bought the car and named it Mary Ellen a long
time before we met and she didn’t have any air
conditioning but who cares on a day like today
because the sun’s out and the windows are down
and we’ve got highway wind going and I take off
my flimsy flip-flops and stick my feet with the
purple toenail polish out the window and close
my eyes and for a little while I forget about the
time Mary Ellen screwed me over with a flat tire
the first time I drove her and it’s like the sun itself
is beaming up inside me like a big giant Necco
wafer
endless day
rainbow on the skin
of a bubble
About the writer:
A multi-Pushcart Prize nominee, Jennifer Hambrick won the 2020 Stevens Poetry Manuscript Competition of the National Federation of State Poetry Societies for her free verse poetry collection In the High Weeds, won the 2020 Sheila-Na-Gig Press Poetry Prize, and won First Place in the 2018 Haiku Society of America Haibun Award Competition. Hambrick authored the poetry collections Joyride (Red Moon Press) and Unscathed (NightBallet Press), and hundreds of her free verse and Japanese short-form poems appear in publications around the world. She is a frequent recipient of poetry commissions and has received numerous awards for her poetry, including from Tokyo’s NHK World TV, Haiku Poets of Northern California, the Ohio Poetry Association, and others. An Ohio Arts Council Teaching Artist in creative writing, Hambrick is also a public radio host and producer, video producer, and web producer in Columbus.
Image: Children of the Sun by Hennie Niemann Jnr. Oil on linen. 120 x 100 cm. 2020. By free license.
