by Earl J Wilcox
You were as hard to contain as chicken with its head cut off.
Speaker for the dissident, fiction writer for those of us who
wanted to learn our craft from the inside out---such stunning
use of the vernacular. Then all that verve and vivid verisimilitude
like nobody before and not for a long time afterward. One of a kind,
Grace, we do all adore you, but we don’t want to make you an icon.
You’d come back and haunt us, chiding the hell out of us, telling
us how to make a poem out of your obit. Or a short story. Or show
us how to stroll through the park while reading our stuff to see if it worked. Today is the day, dear Grace, the time to try it, but I don’t
think I have the guts you did. I’m afraid the dogs will bark, the locals munching on feta or sipping on pinot grigio will run away and doves
will shit on me for trying. But if you think I should do it, by God, I’m going to do it. Here I go. Wish me luck. Don’t you dare rest in peace.
Earl J. Wilcox founded The Robert Frost Review, which he edited for more than a decade. His poetry was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize.