“You taste like dust,” you told me.
“But clean dust, gray dust,
gritty but not dirty.”
How to respond?
It is good to taste of dust
that is not dirt, gray
but not brown, with texture
that, nonetheless, is somehow acceptable. Continue reading “Observations”
Category: Poems
Poetry from Oklahoma
What is Lost
For Curt
The road goes north or east,
And no one knows if it might end
Or where. The sycamores lift leafy heads
Away from the highway’s movement
Above bridges still being built.
The exit calls to you
Like a childhood classmate you don’t
Remember but recognize anyway.
LED billboards jangle the night
Into a kind of hyperactive silence
On the edge of the city. Continue reading “What is Lost”
Silver
We are near the silver, approaching it,
The light like nothing, like everything,
The joy of the movement, the day, the heat
Of the color of your eyes and nothing
Between us, the color of nothing
Between us. If you stand here a while,
You will know what I mean.
Stand here a while. Know what I mean.
–Shaun Perkins
When We Were Young
for Roxann on her birthday
“Open you mouth,”
She said to sister Kelly,
Sitting in the high chair,
Smelling those mashed turnips,
Knowing none of that
Was getting in. Continue reading “When We Were Young”
Dancers at the Caravan Cattle Co., Tulsa OK
Both are barely 5’6, though his hat
Adds 6 inches to his height. They are slender,
His buckle like a giant pull tab
On a paper doll, her hair the color of soured milk.
They dance effortlessly, slowly with short steps,
Without improvisation or flourish. Continue reading “Dancers at the Caravan Cattle Co., Tulsa OK”
September Pool
I thought about you while I was in the pool,
Early September heat stiff above the water,
As present as winter when the ice shimmies
In the pool cover, cracking green, eating leaves. Continue reading “September Pool”
Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry 