The First Time
The first line, or the first two,
the opening thought
needs to be compelling.
It needs to invite the reader not to leave.
It doesn’t have to be perfect,
like a pick-up line or
It was the best of times and the worst,
but it does need to intrigue.
It doesn’t necessarily need to be,
easy to enter, as Billy Collins alludes to,
but the door can’t be locked,
it needs to be ajar, or no one comes in.
This concept leads to a consideration,
of opening words, but also of firsts.
He was a bold man that first ate an
oyster!
Jonathan Swift was quoted as saying.
Did this fellow with effectual drama,
let it slide off the shell,
on to his tongue and down his throat?
Did he have the foresight, to bring a
lemon?
For sure this is not the first time
the first time has been penned as an opener,
but my guess is, that it’s at least
possibly,
a uniquely virgin moment,
that someone is jotting this down
while slurping an oyster, and for lack
of a napkin, wiping lemon juice
on these navy Polo boxers.
Craig R.
Krichner
Craig thinks of poetry as hobo art. He loves storytelling and the aesthetics of the paper and pen. He was nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize, and has a book of poetry, Roomful of Navels. After a writing hiatus he was recently published in Poetry Quarterly, Decadent Review, New World Writing, Skinny, Neologism, Wild Violet, Last Stanza, Unbroken, W-Poesis, The Globe Review, Your Impossible Voice, Fairfield Scribes and has work forthcoming in Ginosko, Last Leaves, Literary Heist, Blotter, Quail Bell, Yellow Mama, Unlikely Stories and The Light Ekphrastic.