Nikki Grimes tells poetic stories at the yard sales.

Welcome to Miss Vy’s Twice Blessed Secondhand Store, with both its in-store merchandise and its hosted yard sales. You will find clothes, Turkish rugs, clay pots, musical instruments, jars of old buttons, jewelry, baby furniture, coins, figurines, cups and saucers, and just about everything else you would expect.

You will also find stories, stories about the original owners and stories about people who purchased them from Miss Vy. And the stories are told in poetry.

Twice Blessed: Yard Sale Stories by writer and poet Nikki Grimes is one of the most fascinating, entertaining, and thoughtful uses of poetry I’ve read. We might wander through a secondhand store or yard sale, casting quick eyes various objects, and never give them a second look. But in Grimes’s hands, every object comes with its own and often unique story. And the objects have more than one story. There’s an origin story, or seller’s story, and a buyer’s story. It’s fascinating to see how Grimes crafts a story around each object.

That Turkish rug, for example. The seller gets rid of an occasional Turkish rug associated with a child’s accident. A seller gets rid of a peacoat no longer needed in a different climate. A buyer finds an unopened box of a doll that helps a family afford a birthday present. And so it goes, with old puzzles, Depression glass, coins, teacups, salt cellars, and more.

Magic Fingers

The first time Jerry saw Luz,
love cracked his heart
wide open.
But he was plain as mud
with ears that flapped
in the wind.
How could he compete
with all those pretty boys
on the high school
football team?
The only thing Jerry had going
was the magic
shooting from his fingertips
whenever he
strummed his guitar.
So, one evening,
ready to risk rejection,
he showed up beneath
what he hoped was
Luz’s bedroom window,
guitar in hand,
and serenaded her
in the key of love.
Luck was with him that night.
Forty years together
till the Lord took her.
Now it’s somebody else’s turn
to strum that guitar
and pluck the strings
of a young girl’s heart.

When the guitar finally lands in a yard sale, a music teacher’s wife finds it, and it becomes a gift for a student who can’t afford it.

Grimes is a writer, poet, and artist, and she’s published numerous books for children and young adults. Her biographies, novels, picture books, and Christmas books have won numerous awards, including five Coretta Scott King Author Honors, Children’s Literacy Legacy Medal, and many others. She’s a prolific writer of magazine articles, and she’s published several poetry collections for both adults and children.

Twice Blessed is an easy collection to enjoy. And to love. Grimes tells stories of joy and heartbreak, of loss and love. The stories are familiar, because we all have our own stories of objects and special finds at yard sales and secondhand shops.

Photo by mrkittums, Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Glynn Young.

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