by Laura Rodley
For thirty-seven years
Billy Belina drove in early morning light
or total dark to spin the polkas
on WMUA on Saturday,
not for the love of money
because he wasn’t paid
but for the love of the polkas.
Joined by Mitch Moskal and friends,
Polka Celebration ended
this morning with little warning,
cut by the powers that be
from UMass University.
Petitions are being signed
and voices raised but polkas
have been out-phased,
though folks listen on line
and twenty seven hundred
have signed from Japan
to Australia, to Chicago, polka land.
So many musicians, so many bands,
fifteen thousand shows
spurring polka music on,
but as of 11:45, that’s all gone.
Laura Rodley’s New Verse News poem “Resurrection” appears in The Pushcart Prlze XXXVII: Best of the Small Presses (2013 edition). She was nominated twice before for the Prize as well as for Best of the Net. Her chapbook Rappelling Blue Light, a Mass Book Award nominee, won honorable mention for the New England Poetry Society Jean Pedrick Award. Her second chapbook Your Left Front Wheel is Coming Loose was also nominated for a Mass Book Award and a L.L.Winship/Penn New England Award. Both were published by Finishing Line Press. Co-curator of the Collected Poets Series, she teaches creative writing and works as contributing writer and photographer for the Daily Hampshire Gazette. She edited As You Write It, A Franklin County Anthology, Volume I and Volume II.