We stopped the white Chevy with the rusted tailgate,
Half in the ditch, and walked up the hillside,
Through the pine trees and scrub oak, fall leaves
Like letters in an abandoned apartment cracking
Under our feet. There was nothing and everything
To see in the woods, the snake skin, coyote scat,
Half-hidden killdeer nest, muddy water of the hollow.
He pointed these things out to me, a child learning
to see from her father. We all learn
To see from the people who came before us. Continue reading “The Killdeer”
Category: Events
Events at ROMP
Singing as the Farm was Home
Another display we’ll have in the museum, besides Marginalia, Doors, and Poet Products, is an interactive one where people can record themselves saying a poem. I just bought 100 blank cassettes off of ebay for this purpose. My other tools are an outdated cassette player gangked from some school in my past and an old karaoke machine that has a cassette player on it (I don’t have one of these yet). Continue reading “Singing as the Farm was Home”
Preparation
The sewing needle rests next to my eighth
vertebrate. I cannot feel it but know
it is there. The thread circles my kidneys
like amber capillaries. A sloping
row of real pearl buttons, tiny full moons,
bump into my small intestine. Silk blocks
wrap the ligaments of my arms, as if
my bones are on fire and must be bandaged
by something cool. A piece of lace crumpled
into a triangle lines my womb. All
that I am, all of my tools and notions,
I have swallowed and absorbed. I now leave
their world. I open the door to the night
and drink my thimbles before I run out.
–Shaun Perkins
(Tam Lin)
The Position of the Stars
Miniskirt held down with laughter,
My arms full of the blue quilt
And package of cherry licorice,
You had the 6-pack of a beer
Only teenagers and drunks would buy.
We ran through the dark cow pasture
To the very center
Or what we thought might be
And still laughing, we stumbled down
Over the remains of alfalfa stalks,
The blanket and licorice beneath us
And the dark expanse of Oklahoma sky above us.
Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry 