Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry
Poetry of the People
Shower the world with crackling leaves,
Dead and limp before but now firm
From frozen dew, this ground your signal
To the creatures you watch in the night.
Shower the broken places with jangles
Of icy prairie grass and let the spring thaw
Spark life never imagined, never believed
In the time of winter’s locked prison.
Shower me with kisses melting hours
Apart, reclaiming late winter sun
When we walked along a silent river
And I saw how you had changed my life.
for Ken
–Shaun Perkins
And I ran for miles
I ran through blackened fields hissing
Below my scarred feet, through dirt roads
Sidelined by progress and the advent
Of the telephone and the cultivated rose
And I ran for being here
We remember
In our bones if not in our behavior,
The struggle inside the web,
The thorn of the hackberry
And the stronger man’s grasp,
Made strong by words
And not by muscle
And I swam too far
I swam out through the river
Til time could not reach me
And the gnats circling
Above the rotting branches
Punctuating every stroke
Finally abandoned me
We remember
Each life blossoming in the new,
The courageous choked in the bully,
The weak reborn in a singer’s lullaby
To the world ever-changing
And never-changing and waiting
To surrender
Its
Hold
On
Fear
–Shaun Perkins
The first place I looked was where the spring rounded the grove of oaks and began to widen into a creek shadowed by sycamores. The moss grew thick on the bare spots of earth where the sun only reached in winter speckles between branches. It spread across the rocks—outcropped on the edges of the creek and sunk into the bank sloping up to a path the deer and raccoon spent their lives making. Continue reading “Arrival”
You lie on the naked bed, the sheets
Finishing the spin cycle, the trailer walls
Shuddering slightly with the motion.
One cat is at your feet, the others
Line the rooms like Egyptian statues
On guard for a dropped piece of cheese. Continue reading “After October Rain”
On Wednesday, Oct. 8, the museum will host a poetry workshop taught by Oklahoma Book Award winner and professor Jeanetta Calhoun Mish.
The event will begin at 6:30 p.m. with a tour of the museum, followed by a workshop at 7:00 p.m. Participants of all ages and experience levels are welcome to attend the tour and the poetry workshop. No previous creative writing experience or training is necessary. Continue reading “Writing Workshop with Oklahoma Book Award Winner!”
Molly tells me you can read
Your fortune in the bathtub:
Run out, count the stars, then
Lock yourself in the bathroom, turn
Off the lights, and you’ll see
Your grave in the bathtub—I did.
But she must be lying.
Oh what I wouldn’t give
For a nickel and a dime
And a cherry with a seed
Inside to crack my teeth upon.
I’m going home, home,
On my way home. Continue reading “Name This Poem”
Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry 