Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry
Poetry of the People
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”
Since we met over a year ago, Ken has sent me lists. He says he is not a poet, but I tend to disagree. Here is the list he sent when I returned from a long weekend in San Diego.
Red Dirt
Redbone Hounds
Ken
Needy Cats
Needy Ken
Cold Weather
Cold Cabbage
Ken Continue reading “13 Welcome Back Things”
I will be in San Diego this weekend spreading poetic love, wisdom, and fortunes. Specifically, I will be leaving the following playing cards with fortunes on them wherever we happen to go in the city. The fortunes are couplets I created for the poetic fortune machine in the museum, but they work well on playing cards, too. Continue reading “A Poet in San Diego”
Red. Yellow. Green. Hint of blush and falling leaf,
Necessary as bread, sweetness of life lived
Out of time and in the stolen, hidden moments
We forget even as we breathe them in. Red.
Yellow. Green. You see them from a distance
In the orchards between farmhouses, bruised
In the stiffening grass, marked by months
On limbs, marked by limbs branched over secrets
The seasons tell. Hard to hold, skin a sheen
Of untouching, one’s own skin aged in comparison. Continue reading “Enter Reaching”
If you hide from the snow, you will
Be found, not by the conformity of color
But by the negation of it. You have lived
Long in the cave of steel and wire,
Long in the forest of electric hum.
It is the day for you to make new
Memories. Continue reading “You Will Be Found”
for Ken
The burn pile is full of branches
You wrested from a neglected arbor.
They will light the November sky
When we find the perfect chilly night. Continue reading “Nuisance”
Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry 