Alexis Ennis is our host today for #VerseLove, inspring us to write poems about historical figures. You can read her full prompt here. I chose Teddy Roosevelt’s firstborn child as my figure.
As a preacher's kid (we seem to have a reputation to live down to, and I've always done my best to keep the trouble going), I was a reader drawn to the troublemakers like Queenie Peavy by Robert Burch in children's literature and Alice Roosevelt in biographies. So that favorite interview question about whom I'd bring back if I could go to lunch with anyone? Yeah, mine was always Alice Roosevelt, with footnotes about how she and I would have surely landed in jail together, cellmates somewhere for some crazy idea we hatched. She had her own eye color named for her (and the US Navy uses this color named for her on its insignia). So much more to tell about her, but here's the seed-starter packet: Eyes of Alice Blue not under MY roof her father TR told her of smoking her cigs she puffed on the roof her snake Emily Spinach there too, in her purse no Taft supporter~ a murrain on him! she raged blue eyes her namesake what a character! completely out of control she fascinates me! come sit by me if you don’t have something nice to say about someone! born two days before mom died upstairs, grandma down under the same roof death clouded her birth, Alice Roosevelt Longworth lived in those shadows For Alice Roosevelt Longworth https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/from-a-white-house-wedding-to-a-pet-snake-alice-roosevelts-escapades-captivated-america-180981139/
Common Threads 