Christopher Notarnicola signed up for the Marine Corps at age 17, and he doesn't fully remember why he signed up. He said it's hard to remember why he did anything at 17.
But he remembers that even though he wasn't the best student in high school, he always dreamed of going to college. He isn't sure where that came from either, but the G.I. Bill and that dream were logical motivations for him.
He knew he could get sent to school through the military. Notarnicola picked up reading in his downtime while in the Marine Corps.
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" I think I was always a little bit of a rebel at heart," Notarnicola said. "I kind of still am, and reading was just such the opposite of anything that anybody could be doing most of the time there."
That love for reading led Notarnicola to become one of O, Miami and WLRN's many ZipOde poets.
Born and raised in Broward County, Notarnicola submitted a Zip Ode in 2021 about the historic Hillsboro Inlet Lighthouse in Pompano Beach with the ZIP Code 33062:
📍 What is a ZipOde? They're five line poems based on where you live, with each number of your zip code determining the number of words in that line.
📥 Submit a poem at wlrn.org/zipodes. Chosen poems will be presented at our ZipOdes finale at Vizcaya Museums and Gardens
Our lighthouse keeps
boats from sinking.
What will boats do when our
lighthouse sinks?
Notarnicola was born in Fort Lauderdale and grew up around the Pompano Beach area all his life, and the lighthouse has been a fixture there for what feels like forever for him.
"Since the time when I was a child to today, there's a pretty noticeable erosion of the beach in that particular little outcropping where the lighthouse stands at the edge of the inlet," he said. "And it's kind of a symbol of these times that we're living in where the sea levels seem to be creeping up a little bit more and more every year."
Expressing a palpable idea like that in such a refined and constrained form like the ZipOde is a challenge that Notarnicola enjoys tackling. He doesn't usually write poetry, but he enjoys writing short stories.
Form, he said, is something that always compels him. The ZipOde's condensed form draws him in.
" It's interesting, to see how it motivates you. It maybe forces some combinations of words that I might have passed up on had I the freedom to write a longer sentence for example," he said.
Notarnicola has since moved to Fort Lauderdale, and has submitted some more poems from his new zip code 33315:
Crew died, said
the cruise captain.
All of them?
One,
and that's one too many.
" That one was inspired by my neighbor who went on a cruise, and I asked him how it was," Notarnicola said. "And he said that somebody went overboard and it was really hard to enjoy the cruise after that."
In April we
pray to the
God of Spring
Break.
Save us from going broke.
" If you're familiar with the economy down here, you know that that's a love-hate relationship with this time of year," he said. "Anybody who's in the service industry, hospitality industry especially, will have that double-edged sword."
For anyone who doesn't know where to start when it comes to writing a ZipOde or a short story, Notarnicola said writing what you know is a good place to start.
" Just start with whatever is there for you, whatever is most palpable for you as a writer … and then try to articulate or answer those questions even on the page."
You can read Notarnicola's plays and short works here.
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