| How You Became the First Great Escape Artist Poem by Tripp Howell Published in Lily, September, 2006 Your finest piece of genius was leaving your fingerprints on a feather, whistling, walking casually away, your hands in your pockets while the crime scene flew south for the winter. Then how you shrugged your way through the interrogation, how your answers arrived like grateful pilgrims on a cloudy day, how your barrage of metaphors short circuited the polygraph. Even the clock applauded by announcing midnight. Accusations were folded and put into cookies. Past replaced future as the newest best-selling fiction. And your photographs, your signatures, every god you ever prayed to, how they commanded the main room in a museum of mirages for the rest of time. •••••
Tripp Howell was born in 1972 and has a B.A. in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His first chapbook, Sweetest Little Head Case, was a finalist in the 2005 Main Street Rag Chapbook Contest and was published by Main Street Rag Press in the fall of 2006. His poem "Left Hands of Men with Right Arms Only" won the Half-Drunk Muse 2005 "Penny Jar Prize". His work has appeared in numerous print and online journals. He resides in Shelby, North Carolina. |