A Birmingham, Alabama, native, Danny Gamble is a graduate of the University of Montevallo and the Master of Fine Arts Program in creative writing at the University of Alabama. His poems have appeared in such publications as Aura, Dang!, Alternative Harmonies, and Persimmon Dry, a chapbook of regional poets. He has written feature articles for several publications, including Birmingham, Birmingham Art Line, The Society for Fine Arts Review, and Alabama Game and Fish. He is also the author of Exit: Brautigan, a one-man play based on the life and work of poet/novelist Richard Brautigan. He has appeared in multi-media performances with UAB Danscape and Southern Danceworks. He has taught English at Selma University, Miles College, Waycross College, Jefferson State Community College, Wallace Community College Selma, and Bessemer State Technical College. His writing awards include the Tower Award for Poetry from UM and the Eleanor B. North Award for poetry and the Elva Bell McLin Scholarship from Sigma Tau Delta, the international English honorary. He was Senior Elite in Journalism at UM. He is presently an adjunct instructor of English at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and a teaching writer with the Writing Our Stories Program: the Violence Prevention Initiative for Incarcerated Alabama Youth, a cooperative venture of the Alabama Department of Youth Services and the Alabama Writers' Forum.
Bloch Street Ladies
On Bloch Street three ladies dance
steps learned from video clips.
The short block they call home
vibrates with their motion.
On these warm spring evenings
they throw open their doors
and stamp the ground
like yearlings, eager to run.
Their hair, fresh and clean,
their skirts, fresh and clean,
sway with the music
of their young bodies.
This is their dance,
old as flirtation.
And if they saw me,
watching from the drive-through
across the street,
they would curtsy low,
show a little leg.
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