Tag: family

Poems

Laying in the Parking Lot at the Low Water Dam Store

ROMPoetry

concreteThe cops were called in because of the report
Of a woman “laying in the parking lot
At the dam store.” It’s not spoonbill season
So the store was not busy,
Just one woman supine on the concrete
And then one young man trying
To get her up.

She was belligerent and told to leave the store,
Then lay down in the parking lot
And refused to go anywhere else,
Until her son tried to pick her up
Before the cops came. He was unsuccessful.
I don’t know if she was arrested.
I do hope that instead of laughing,
Like I did when I read the story,
If I had been there, I would have been
A traffic cone rigid and mute between her
And the rest of the dam world.

–Shaun Perkins

 

Poems

Brother

ROMPoetry

shaun-davidHe had meningitis as a baby
And almost died. It came
With horrible headaches
That he relieved by lying
In bed and rolling his head
Back and forth and repeating
Uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh
Until he fell asleep.

As children, we often went
With our dad into the woods
And listened to him name
The trees and the fox dens,
The place where moss
Would grow, the unrelieved
Smell of turtle flesh
Rotting in bleached shells.

Once on a trail ride,
My horse slipped and fell
And he jumped off his own
To . . . check on me? Save
Me? He was a tiny, sick baby.
He walked in the world
With me. He is my brother
And nothing will change that.

–Shaun Perkins

Musings, Poems

Forget Me Not: Autograph Book Exhibit

ROMPoetry

 

autograph1This summer I will be replacing the Marginalia exhibit in the Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry with one on Poetry in Autograph Books. I think finding poetry-worthy marginalia in old books was kind of a singular phenomenon, meaning, I am crazier about such a thing than most people. It may be that I am crazier about old autograph books than most people, too, but . . . here goes! Continue reading “Forget Me Not: Autograph Book Exhibit” →

Poems

Where I Come From

ROMPoetry

Mom-Me

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” →