Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry
Poetry of the People
The year 2013 ended auspiciously for your humble curator. On Dec. 24, I learned I won a grant for the museum from the Popular Culture Association. Two days later, I was run over by a semi-truck and lost my lovely Black Panther (Ford Ranger) and am still without a vehicle, but I survived.
What will 2014 hold for the museum? The biggest news is that I am expanding. Continue reading “ROMP Shop”
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”
Oklahoma has created some stellar poets, to name a few–John Berryman, Joy Harjo, N. Scott Momaday, and Kevin Welch. Our fly-over state has also produced some first-rate songwriters who have the musical poet strong inside them: Garth Brooks, Roy Clark, Wanda Jackson, Reba McEntire, Leon Russell, Dwight Twilley, Bob Wills, and Kevin Welch again, among them. But our greatest poet has to be Woody Guthrie. And yes, he was a poet. Just read the lyrics to “Harness Up The Day”: Continue reading “Harness Up The Day”
Yonkers, Oklahoma, was abandoned and flooded
To create Lake Fort Gibson in 1933.
Eighty years later, in the scrub oaks of
Northern Wagoner County, it remains in
Foundation puzzles and a one-room skeleton
Of the school where Cherokees and whites
Learned together until water was needed more. Continue reading “Flooded Town”
She hasn’t had this many people in her house
since her husband died. She found his upper
dental plate in the whatnot drawer while looking
for a package of yeast. The floor is collapsing
and they’re all riding the beeline to hell.
Her aunt used to tell her uncles when they drank
too much: You’re in first class on the beeline to hell, Continue reading “Thanksgiving”
In the general store north
Of Toronto, Kansas, I bought
Handmade postcards from
A local artist, a rusted Ford
In a field of weeds, rooster,
Meadows of sunflowers.
The dusty baggie held
Five cards. It is hard to find
Postcards anymore. Gone
With them are letters
And notes and notebooks
Full of notes and notes on
Lined paper or stationery. Continue reading “Ephemera”
Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry 