Lynn Aprill
CONTACT:
Address: N853 Laney Road Seymour, WI 54165
Email: l.aprill8@gmail.com
Website: https://lynnaprill.weebly.com/
BIO:
Lynn Aprill is an award-winning poet and educator whose work has appeared recently or is forthcoming in Creative Wisconsin magazine, Copperfield Review Quarterly, Bramble, WinglessDreamer, Quartet Journal, Willows Wept Review, Ekphrastic Review and others. A Wisconsin native, she received a BA in English from UW-Eau Claire and an MA in Curriculum and Instruction from UW-Milwaukee. She is ridiculously excited to retire in 2023 and begin her MFA program (virtually) through Lindenwood University in St. Charles, Missouri. She resides with her husband and various dogs on 40 acres in Northeast Wisconsin.
Her poem “Love” received third place for poetry in the Wisconsin Writers Association Jade Ring Competition, 2022.“The Message” was the flash fiction winner in The Ekphrastic Review Fifty Shades of Blue contest, 2022. “Advice for a First-Year Teacher” received first place for Free Verse in the Poets and Patrons 65th Chicagoland contest, 2021, and was chosen as one of the featured poems in the 2022 Fall Fine Arts online gallery for Delta Kappa Gamma International.
PUBLICATIONS:
Channeling Matriarchs, her first chapbook with Finishing Line Press was published in 2021 and can be ordered on their website.
Poetry
Advice for a First-Year Teacher
They tell you never smile
until Christmas, the better
to establish the right tone,
and positively never let them
make you cry, at least
not in front of them; wait
until the bell ushers them
out of their desks
like cows from their stalls,
filing into ragged ranks
down the cinder block hallway.
Then slip like a shadow
into a convenient closet,
already stocked with tissues
and your favorite sweater, sob
on its shoulder for two minutes,
so you have the other two
to blot your eyes and gather
the pieces of yourself
for the next class. Notice
that quiet kid in the corner,
the funny one in the front row,
the hungry one in the back.
Pick up their lingo, bridging
the gap between your generations
by being just a little funnier
and little smarter
than they first gave you credit for.
Lesson plan. Assign seats.
Organization is the only thing
that will save you. Keep
the post-it you find tucked
into your drawer that says,
“You’re my favorite teacher,”
but feign ignorance of the condom
slipped into your glove--it’s a test,
a Geiger counter to gauge
the level of your reaction--
Disappoint. Them.
Be there enough--just enough
for those who come to you
needing a champion, but not enough
to lose yourself, to forget that you
are more, to forget who you were
before you stepped in front of them.
Reversal of Fortune
“If it pleases the king,” [Queen Esther] said, “and if he regards me with favor and thinks it the right thing to do, and if he is pleased with me, let an order be written overruling the dispatches that Haman . . . devised and wrote to destroy the Jews in all the king’s provinces. For how can I bear to see disaster fall on my people? How can I bear to see the destruction of my family?”
Esther 8 : 5-6
Haman, Haman,
with your ridiculous strut and your ten slick sons,
did you think you would invent genocide? Did you hope to destroy all of the Chosen?
Did you call down the king’s wrath and raise gallows
to hang your own generations upon?
Oh, foolish man
to think that God does not command the consequences
of every cast of the lot.
More foolish yet to throw yourself
upon the couch of a queen and beg for pardon.
What can I do, being only a woman, and a Jew?
Published in Channeling Matriarchs