Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry
Poetry of the People
The ravine is littered with fallen branches
From elm trees refusing to become corpses,
With the crumpled bark of sycamore
And the decaying cedar that crackles
Like popcorn when you put it into the fire.
Beat your chest, lover, and summon the gods
Who made you to gloat upon your power,
Your camouflaged care, your with-one-paper
Kindling responding to the placement
By intentional hands, bringing me beauty. Continue reading “What Remains”
for Mom
Stories are a part of my life because of her.
They are a part of everyone’s life but not so vividly,
Nor so intimately, as they are in my life
Because she valued story and books and poems.
We took the station wagon to the Pryor Public Library
Once a week and walked out, each of us, with a pile
Of books we could barely carry. They spread
Through our house like amoeba, like fleas, like waters
Unleashed in a basin needing to be filled. She knew
The head librarian, so we could break the rules
And check out forty books at a time, forty books
That would live in us for a week in that house
On the creek, in that place where our stories thrived. Continue reading “Where I Come From”
The catfish are the Bozos of the bottom,
Blundering from ledges, bumping into me,
Their whiskers slashing my skirt into circus pennants.
Their heads are rocks split across the middle,
Mouths opening slowly as if levered.
They are ugly and regal and harmless,
Even when I forget where I am and startle them
By lifting the sword from the sand
And sending it to the surface before me.
The bass scatter. I speared one once. Continue reading “In the Lake”
It is time to make a living via poetry. Well . . . sort of.
I have two weeks left at my full-time job at the rock quarry before I get laid off. I teach part-time for meager wages at two colleges, and it’s not enough to live on. I am excited about not driving to Tulsa 3 days a week, but I am a bit scared about the prospect of supporting myself. I will have more time for museum enterprises, which have never cost much money anyway. The building was donated by my parents, the materials that went into creating the exhibits and displays were found materials or donated or bought on the cheap at yard sales. All the labor that has gone into the museum has been the loving work of friends and family. Continue reading “Odd-Job Woman at Odds”
Sometimes you are all together.
Sometimes you are apart.
Sometimes you gather for a holiday.
Sometimes you go to work on your own.
Sometimes you eat in silence.
Sometimes your plate is full with laughter. Continue reading “Sometimes”
One day the question collides in you,
The curve of its newness slick behind
Your ear, mimicking that same arc,
Teasing you into listening, and this time,
To the way the wind whistles around
Your neck, the adjustment your feet
Make to the undulation of the earth
On this path not taken before to a place
Which tethers you without force
—Cool ageless stones lining
The threshold where you pause to drink
From a bowl of water that has appeared
To ease the burden of the new battle
Blushing its shame through your body. Continue reading “Finding the Place Where”
Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry 