Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry
Poetry of the People
Poetry from Oklahoma
The spoonbill were running at low water dam,
But the shirtless and shifty left little room
To cast a line. We took the advice
Of the bait shop clerk and a one-legged war veteran
On a scooter and headed across corps land
To a sand bass creek. Crossing a low area, Continue reading “Moving”
“CIA assassination plots included poisoning a box of Castro’s favorite cigars with botulinus toxin and placing explosive seashells in his favorite diving spots.”
The box of oatmeal broke apart
In my hands, the Quaker man
Decapitated, his smile
An unreturned greeting
Forever.
One wonders how chance
And plan intersect. I found
A missing earring when I bent
To scoop up the oats.
What if he had not been drawn
To the purple drupa
And instead reached
For the virgin murex? Continue reading “Exploding Seashells”
Cannot be content with cardinal,
With chickadee, mockingbird, and woodpecker,
Cannot be content with what naturally seeks you
Or at least what appears naturally around you. Continue reading “Flamingo in Forsythia”
When we moved to town, we were in walking distance
Of the sale barn, the place of cardboard boxes
Full of stuffed animals, cattle for auction, popsicles,
Rows of tin sheds full of okra, corn and blackberries, overalls,
Blackened cooking pots and strange tools like rusted weapons. Continue reading “Sale Barn”
“Normally this formation weathers out along high, narrow, and short ridges that in airplane view resemble the convolutions of calves’ brains.”
–Oklahoma Geological Survey, Beavers Bend State Park Guide Book XI, 1963
The Choctaw knew this land,
Knew the way it could be lived on,
The way it could be wasted
–as a kill is wasted for sport
–as a life is wasted, as is the tree, as is the heart. Continue reading “Convolutions of Calves’ Brains”
We wait for the crabgrass and dandelions and wild onion
To shuffle aside the fall leaves, our feet crunching
What has died, our attention focused on sun and wind,
The beauty of not-yet-spring, oh but almost, almost. Continue reading “Almost, Almost”
Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry 