UNDERCOVER Paperback Release, Contest, and Poem

This coming week, the paperback of UNDERCOVER, along with its back-0f-book extras, is being released. Some of you know already that the story continues in those extras, revealed by Elisa through a new collection of her poems. Elisa has given me permission to run one of those poems here.

In the meantime, I am (and I say this without excess) astonished, daily, by the poems that so many of you are writing and posting. I would like, then, to announce a contest, the winner of which will receive a signed copy of the UNDERCOVER paperback. I'd like those of you who might be interested to send to me, in the comments section of this post, a link to your best blogged poem. I'll be assembling fragments of those poems for a future post, and I'll be asking a special person to choose a favorite. This contest will close on May 10th. For more on the paperback, check out the UNDERCOVER trailer on the left margin of this blog.

Contest Updates: I had promised a very special guest judge of this contest. Let me now reveal that the final judge of this contest will be none other than Miss Jill Santopolo herself, my editor and friend at HarperTeen. All ages are welcome to submit. There will be three prizes.

Pearl Earrings

You were the uncle who rolled his trousers at the shore.
You smelled of sequins, fusty paper bags, slightly tacky Elmer’s glue,
the Styrofoam that began the balls you made each year

for Christmas. You never brought me the right presents
on purpose. You always kept the pearl earrings in their velvet
box in your one deep pocket until Mom had gone
to check the turkey, and it was just the two of us. I knew

you loved me best. You also loved Hollywood and gossip, yoghurt,
the secrets you kept. I never thought
you would die so soon. I never thought

you would die to begin with. The sea, however,
is where you left it, and I never put the pearls to my ear
without loving you first, without wanting to tell you

that I am becoming someone true.