East of the Hills
We swore then the .Smoky Hills held the clouds back–
some Red River Valley conspiracy
witholding bread from poor Finns
and sand farmers.
In the early sixties, the .Shell Lake dam
let only a trickle down past our high riverbanks.
Wide-spaced corn barely made sileage.
The reaper reached low for light oats.
We baled up brome and reed canary from low spots,
day after day drove the caws across the river
for wiry grass and slow blades on dry hummocks.
Dad would search the empty skies,
eyeing the damned hills
hunched smugly on the wet horizon
and we shivered at the “poor house”
we were headed for.
We crowded ont.o the back porch
where rain finally came,
the smell of it, our finest feast.
Through sheets of water,
my father captained the H home standing up,
in road gear all the way,
his old hat, a wet washcloth stuck to his head.
In the granary, he waited out the downpour,
a young boy seeing in his father’s eyes
the great Depression over,
by Gail Rixen
Chokio, Minnesota
Some Q Signals
(Poem fragment found by Ross Signal in a book about shortwave radio.)
QRL Are you busy? I am busy. Please do not interfere.
QRM Is my transmission being interfered with? Your transmission is being interfered with.
QRN Are you troubled by static? I am troubled by static.
QRO Shall I increase power? Increase power.
QRP Shall I decrease power? Decrease power.
QRQ Shall I send faster? Send faster.
QRS Shall I send slower? Send slower.
QRT Must I stop sendin? Stop sending.
QRU Have you anything for me? I have nothing for you.
QRV Are you ready?I am ready.
QRX When will you call again?I will call you again at X hours.
QRZ Who is calling me?You are being called by X .
QSA What is the strength of my signals? The strength of your signals is X .
QSB Are my signals fading? Your signals are fading.
Changing Your Life With Pigs
The Porcine Canticles by David Lee. Copper Canyon Press, 1984. 108 pages. $10.00, paper.
reviewed by ???
If you’ve got a thing for pigs, country folk, or just like to laugh, then David Lee wrote a book for you. Even if you don’t normally read poetry, it’s for you. David Lee writes rhythmically versed stories and conversation and does it so well that you’ll start thinking in incomplete thoughts and words that suddenly make sense to you.
Yeah, it’s about pigs. But it’s also about beating the system. It’s about barbed wire. It’s about grave blasters, chain letters and best friends. It’s about people, money and the human condition. It’s about the craziest book I’ve ever read.
David Lee gives you hope that you can accomplish the ridiculous, however, he’s not making any promises. He gives you tips on how to outsmart the law and lessons on how to get by. Throughout the book, there’s a great display of a bizarre kind of love: “Alas, goddammit. I loved that pig.”
Plowing
1
All my life. Broken ground.
Shovels. John Deere bangers. Sticks, cats, hoes
always forgotten people speak
old ways, lost ways, fossils.
I found an old plow
bought leather straps, borrowed John’s
half blind Dan n goddamit boy
don let that sonnybitch kick ya he’s mean bastard
sed John, helped me with harnmess.
2
My anticipations all misplaced,
early plowed uunder. Expected sun
and flesh, tracings and neck leaders
mind drifting to Kolob’s breezes,
tired arms, hoarse throat.
Found wind, thick clods. John’s Dan
walked easy, followed his good eye
in straight lines. I moved, something habitual,
behind, stepping over turned earth
shy at harness
precariously balanced on one of the world’s edges
wind against my hair
exploding into afternoon god aint he somin
that mule’s so old he carried Moses inta Jewsalem
and he aint forgot a goddam thang
wind and earth and animal
the only geometry.
3
All my life I’ve heard death
takes us to the the cycle’s center,
where we should be, crystals
clusters. We exist within, know
both sides at once. Perfect definition.
And that life is broken parabola.
We wander against wind, random circles,
no closer to center, glimpses,
shadows and edges I caint tell ya how to do it boy
its gonna be there in ya bones or it aint shit for nowhere
the world inside. And I followed John’s mule
my boots relaxed in stillness, shattered dust
plowed earth, wind, sky.
And John walked beside, talked of hog markets
hollow bones, lakebottoms and forgotten ways.
The moon swalled dusk. Our image
crystalized against a backdrop of night.
Culture
So Aeneas walked up the Tiber until he found
as sow
she had a litter of thirty pigs
and he knew it was a sign
that would be the place
Where’d he go to get a boar?
No, it was a myth.
But where’d he get his boar?
He didn’t. He killed the sow on the site
and sacrificed
her to the gods for marking the place
You goddam stupid sonofabitch how come you telling me stories
like that I’m busy I haven’t got no time to listen to that
horseshit you go get in your car and go on home and find you
another book to read and you tell him next time call me I’ll
make it right with god and him both you tell him a sow hog has
thirty pigs I’ll trade him my pickup straight acrost sight unseen
but I don’t want to hear it now I got work to do who wrote that
damn book he must of lived in New York City his whole life in
a whorehouse somewhere just go on I ain’t listening to no more
writing like that I don’t need it you tell him if he doesn’t
know nothing about pigs then don’t write about pigs he should
find something else that’s all
Shelling Peas
by Gene G. Bradbury
Shelling peas she sits
her apron hanging over
the paintless floor,
shelling.
Gray splotches in white hair
blend to the planks behind
weathered years scraped clean,
Her lizard sprinting fingers
drop pods to floor peas in
yellow bowl enough for
dinner.
Grandpa hoes fifteen feet out
a sailor swabbing his deck
Oskosh coveralls and felt hat,
stained
Cabbage heads peak over clods
waiting the day their heads
snap to lay on Grandma’s
cutting board.
Grandpa straightens up wipes
his furrowed brow and watches
Grandma let the screen door slam,
behind.
Each knows the other too well to
talk at table over the oil cloth.
Their feet tap out silence on
linoleum.
They taste the peas shucked by her
hoed by him and listen to moth wings
on the screened porch door to the
garden.
one on none
by Ken Lymons
just a solitary urban shooter
arcing deadly rainbows
from another zip code
camped in the perimeter–
nothing but net!
as the non-existent crowd
chants his name
like a roundball mantra
here in ~he hrown haze
of another Stage One twilight
this smogged out playground
becomes the Fabulous Forum
in the fevered jumpshots
of his middle-aged dreams
there are no broken marriages
no pink slips, no riots
no pain in the lane
as he drives for a lay-up
even his own life
can’t stop him.
Last Fantasy
I like to see you wear
your explicity romance shoes
the ones that come untied
when you smile
Ken Lymons
Haiku
Snarling down rose-strewn
Boulevard, fuzz-busting gait,
Mercury Bobcat……
Kent Clair Chamberlin
(A Prosepoem)
A MAN CALLED “DUCK”
by Jean Andre
The clouds were low, bulbous, the color of wet cement.
The earth, spongy from a recent rain, rose beneath my feet.
I crouched as though I were in a darkened crawl space.
No-oh, no, this wasn’t the country cemetery I remembered!
When I was a child it had been a golden past
