Vigorous turnout for Tuesday's primary in Laconia, Meredith and Gilford
—The Laconia Daily Sun (NH), January 25, 2024
Ron’s been after me for months. Maybe a year.
Those first calls from a Florida area code.
Not saying much. Just I want, I need, I feel you.
Then Mike started in, and Chris and Tim
and then Vivek and Nikki, people I’d never heard of
let alone from, Asa and Doug and... well, even
the Big Guy, whose name I will not repeat here.
The calls and texts really ramped up after Christmas.
They just don’t get it—I moved to Philadelphia in 2018
even though I kept my 603 phone number. So I’m
still a potential to them (you can tell how accurate
their information is... So many invitations
to coffee, to lunch, to rallies, townhalls, for a while
Nikki was inviting me multiple times a day—to Plymouth,
to Meredith, North Conway, Bristol, Littleton, she must
have wheels on her little high heels. Vivek had the most
interesting menus—hot dog cart, bagels, ribs! That was
a surprise. Today the phone’s silent. No one cares about
small me anymore. And the Big Guy? I know he hit my home
town. Probably won it. My poor deluded former neighbors
and their little red hats.
Pediatrician Kelley White has worked in inner-city Philadelphia and rural New Hampshire. Her poems have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Rattle and JAMA. Her most recent collection is A Field Guide to Northern Tattoos (Main Street Rag Press.)She received a 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant and is currently Poet in Residence at Drexel University College of Medicine. Her newest collection, NO.HOPE STREET has just been published by Kelsay Books.