I hired the best musicians to beautify the background
through dinner meals or as we sat at the fire,
and I played the violin, taught by a traveling magician.
I learned the songs of my people and of his also.
I had a voice the animals in the field would stop to hear.
I bathed in herbs the magician gave me and smoothed
my arms and legs with perfumed oils that came Continue reading “The Second Isolde”
Category: Poems
Poetry from Oklahoma
Skateboard Blues
He cracked his skateboard in half doing a slide yesterday.
Though it didn’t work, “It was cool” and it made him grin.
Today he stalks the street, angling the lawnmower
Ahead of him, searching for quick cash to buy
Another deck, a more expensive one, righteous
With amped weight capacity, one that won’t snap
In two on a slide. I have maybe sixty-seven cents
In my purse, though yesterday I charged two pairs
Of boots at Penney’s. He stops a block away Continue reading “Skateboard Blues”
Igraine’s Letter
It is not a chaste kiss
One wants from another
Who is the focus of drowning
Desire
It is not that
Merlin: a life of magic with no love
–only obsession at the end
yet
His empathy for Uther
His empathy toward passion
Propelled enchantment. Continue reading “Igraine’s Letter”
Your Wild
Most nights, after I am asleep
You go out with your flashlight
And review things seen in day
Transformed like words spoken
First by someone you love,
Then by someone you don’t, Continue reading “Your Wild”
Sand Handle
We pulled on the handle
And went down to live with the crabs,
Burrowing in four-feet deep
To crusty water, the smell
Of ocean death and pincher,
Taste of ancestors crowding darkness,
The message of being sunk
Foundering us in the brine.
I have always wanted
To know what would happen
If I opened that door.
–Shaun Perkins
The Elder Blackberry
The ones that hide out
Til late July know their mission
Will succeed—that they will instigate
A smoky smoothness in the mouth,
Compel the body to relax
Into a remembered time of endless
Feasts in a sun-cooked field. Continue reading “The Elder Blackberry”
Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry 