Flip-flops are on my mind. And no, I don’t have a shoe or foot fetish. My feet just love to be comfortable and naked; my toes just love to be free. And warm weather means I can break out the flip-flops and sandals. Thanks be to the Egyptians. Thanks to America for falling in love with them – a huge variety are for sale everywhere. AND thanks be to Illinois Times -- we staffers can do the flip-flop/sandal thing even on work days as evidenced below.
So why, flip-flops today, O’ Great Universe? Is it because flip-flops are a great example of onomatopoeia. Where the word of the thing sounds like the thing itself. Think, buzz. Or because a flip-flop poem is wishing to be birthed in my head? Man, people are writing about these little creatures. Google “flip-flop and poetry” and you’ll see lots of poems with flip-flops mentioned. The Academy of American Poets’ search engine even pulled up two poems. The best one I read on the Internet to date is Flip-Flops by Andrew Frolish at Suffolk Poetry Society.
And if you think you’d heard it all, check out this book, Cyclops Wearing Flip-Flops. They got me with that title. San Francisco’s Center for the Art of Translation has a program called Poetry Inside Out. They published in 2011 an anthology of elementary and middle school students’ translations of worldwide celebrated poets and student original poems. They promote the book as “an ideal volume for introducing world poetry to children ages eight and up.”
I challenge you to write about flip-flops. Email to [email protected] for possible publication on my blog. If I get enough poems, I’ll showcase flip-flop poetry.
