Sandee Gertz

Sandee Gertz is a native of Western Pennsylvania and a graduate of Wilkes University's M.A. and M.F.A. program. In 2012, she published a poetry collection, The Pattern Maker's Daughter, with Bottom Dog Press. This book has been used and taught in several universities in the Pittsburgh area, including Carnegie Mellon's Poetry department with Jim Daniels. Sandee has several awards in writing and has published poems and essays widely in literary journals, including Poet Lore, Gargoyle, Green Mountains Review, and others. In 2014, she was featured as one of 16 Working Class Poets in World Literature, and recently her fiction has been announced as a finalist for the Porch Prize. Sandee currently teaches at Cumberland University outside of Nashville in the English and Creative Writing departments.

Some Girls Have Auras of Bright Colors

The first thing you need to know is that some girls have auras of bright colors, but mine were silver stars on walls, tears when I sat at mother’s bay window, and sometimes an odd feeling of time over a never-ending space, where I followed a dark hole, layer through layer, opening to a time before me, God, and a time before that, until the emptiness settled into stones in the pit of my stomach and I had to touch anything: a polished shoe, a porcelain cup, to be sure I was in this world before it shifted and fell.

Creative Nonfiction

Issue 41, September 2020

Sandee Gertz

Sandee Gertz is a native of Western Pennsylvania and a graduate of Wilkes University's M.A. and M.F.A. program. In 2012, she published a poetry collection, The Pattern Maker's Daughter, with Bottom Dog Press. This book has been used and taught in several universities in the Pittsburgh area, including Carnegie Mellon's Poetry department with Jim Daniels. Sandee has several awards in writing and has published poems and essays widely in literary journals, including Poet Lore, Gargoyle, Green Mountains Review, and others. In 2014, she was featured as one of 16 Working Class Poets in World Literature, and recently her fiction has been announced as a finalist for the Porch Prize. Sandee currently teaches at Cumberland University outside of Nashville in the English and Creative Writing departments.

Some Girls Have Auras of Bright Colors

The first thing you need to know is that some girls have auras of bright colors, but mine were silver stars on walls, tears when I sat at mother’s bay window, and sometimes an odd feeling of time over a never-ending space, where I followed a dark hole, layer through layer, opening to a time before me, God, and a time before that, until the emptiness settled into stones in the pit of my stomach and I had to touch anything: a polished shoe, a porcelain cup, to be sure I was in this world before it shifted and fell.

Creative Nonfiction

Issue 41, September 2020

Back to Author Index