If it’s April, it’s National Poetry Month!
We are so excited at Fiftiness to celebrate National Poetry Month by introducing poetry to our site. What a perfect form of the written, or spoken word, to give us perspective on the universal truths of being a woman over fifty.
Introducing Julie Grass . . .
I am pink hot tamale red
tea kettle blowing
steam into a frenzied whistle
bolting from the table
insane with heat
outside barefoot
my face a dark cherry
burrowing into heaps of crispy snow.
Find me a meat locker
send me to Juno
lock me in a Baskin Robbins
or lay me naked
on a glacial lake
surrounded by electric fans
on high
a can of frozen lemonade
deep in each armpit.
Oh God give me estrogen.
* * *
A little bit about our Poet: 
Julie Grass has six brightly painted mannequin feet walking across her kitchen ceiling and she has a gorilla suit in her front closet. She eats popcorn and blueberries with chopsticks and has published poems in several literary journals including Northwest Review, PoemMemoirStory, 88, Hawaii’s Review, Eureka Literary Magazine, and Plainsongs.
Editor’s Note: I want to throw my arms around Julie for being my test poet in my nascent career as content creator! Thank you for trusting us, and thank you for your bravery. You have put a perfect & funny spin on an uncomfortable reality. I also want to encourage everyone to find small ways of celebrating National Poetry Month. Poem-a-Day, delivers poetry directly to your in-box. Poem-in-your-pocket is celebrated on April 27. Think of it as having an Ace in your pocket for the day! The United States Poet Laureate from 2001 to 2003, Billy Collins said in his 2012 Ted Talk, “It’s a good thing to get poetry off the shelves and more into public life. Start a meeting with a poem. That would be an idea you might take with you.” So take a poem with you every day throughout the month of April. Or read one here!
Born in New York, raised in the suburbs of Detroit, Erica Jamieson now lives in Los Angeles. She is stretching into the open spaces created by her two kids off at college, enjoying clean kitchen counters, far less laundry and the perks of empty nesting with her husband of almost three decades. Erica is a fitness enthusiast (evening walks over Xanax) Loves words, coffee and her family. Not always in that order.
I LOVE JULIE GRASS!!!! Publish more more more of her, please! I don’t know what it is ….. but she’s like Carrie Fisher, meets an Anglo Morgan Parker or something. I love her humor, her warmth, her honesty and the wit expressed with her finger on the pulse of every one of us who have been there, are there, or will soon be there.
Really love both videos and poems I’ve seen/read so far! Thanks!
Julie Grass has such a way with words. I love this poem. Whenever someone mentions something about how menopause is affecting them, I refer them to this poem. We need more! I hope she’ll write and share more of her descriptive, humorous takes on women and life that we can read, enjoy, and share.