Welcome to the next installment of my “Behind the Poems” series. Check out more of these posts here.

This is another poem published in my alma mater’s literary journal, The Cypress Dome. It’s one of my earliest forays into acrostic poems and it set off my love for the format.

D Major

Calloused fingertips press against steel and nylon strings. They curl,
Hammer-on some notes, and let others sing a softer song. One, two,
One, two, three, four…The tempo pulses like a hammering heart.
Relax, press, pick, strum. I pluck each note with intent. Start
Down the frets, fingers slide, making a tinny squeal.

Swaying my body with the four-four beat I nod my head and
Tap my feet. The instrument’s curve and my lap fit one another
Readily, like lock and key. Vibrating strings buzz at my fingertips.
Up and down, up and down, my hand strokes the six lines,
Mesmerized, intoxicated, giving in. I’m letting the music play.

For those unfamiliar, an acrostic poem uses the letters of a word(s) as the first letter of each line to create a piece about the word(s) itself. How the poem relates to the chosen keyword(s) is open to interpretation by the poet.

Here, I wrote about the feeling of playing guitar. It’s been years now since I took lessons and played the instrument. But reading over this poem, I remember clearly the sense of harmony that overcomes me when I’m lost in the music.

I tend to stay away from most structured formats of poetry, as I feel restricted when I start to focus too much on elements like meter count and rhyme scheme. I often feel locked by these mechanisms. But something about an acrostic format feels like just enough restraint and challenge with the freedom to make the poem work as I need it.

In fact, the acrostic format to me feels the way music does. You can stay within the chord structure and hit the necessary notes, but the freedom comes in the texture you choose to convey those notes. While I may play or sing in D major, I decide if it will be a straight note or reverberate.

I chose the title “D Major” because that’s the key of my favorite song at the time, Good Charlotte’s “Let the Music Play.” It was such a favorite of mine that I even have a tattoo of it on my ankle. I think I fell in love with poetry because I already loved music. The two feel like cousins to me.

Welcome to the second installment of a series I’m doing called Behind the Poems. You can see the first post here.

I had the great honor of having one of my earliest published poems accepted at The Cypress Dome, the literary journal from my alma mater, the University of Central Florida. This poem, workshopped in my poetry class, was published during my last year at the school right before I graduated.

This poem depicts a fond memory from my childhood when I was about eight or nine years old. It was the first time I’d been allowed to be up so late, way past midnight, and witness something spectacular. I still remember how magical it felt and I wanted to capture that emotion in the imagery.

I don’t actually know if the meteor shower I saw were the Leonids, but when I looked up the events of that year for research, this seemed the closest occurrence. It’s not about the accuracy of the facts, because this is coming from a child’s perspective. There’s even a reference to my favorite Disney movie from that time. I’ll let you decipher it.

The Toyota featured in this poem is long gone now. It’s surreal to read this poem with that car mentioned because a few years later, it went up in flames on the side of the highway in Miami Springs. For me, this poem serves as a historical record of things that were and will always be frozen in time.

I also remember from this event I was allowed to stay home from school the next day for being up late. This was a big to-do, as staying home from school usually only happened if we were really sick. It was one of my first lessons in understanding that some things in life are more important and have more value than school and academics.