How can you hurry a poem? You can’t. The simmering stew on the fire satisfies sooner. Lovers under the slow moon come faster. The seed of a soul, nine months making, makes quicker. Opening the door on a poem begins with finding it first, only to learn the key has been lost ‘till it’s found … Continue reading One Way a Maker Makes
Tag: creative writing
A Neighbor, a Bull, Some Purebred Cows, and a Dilapidated Fence.
This morning Archie Dwiddlen was retrospecting about some of our old neighbors. It seems Alden and Issac were neighbors with a fence between them. There was a some confusion about who should maintain the fence. Alden was pretty sure it was Issac’s potion of the fence that Alden’s mongrel angus bull was sneaking through to … Continue reading A Neighbor, a Bull, Some Purebred Cows, and a Dilapidated Fence.
Beautiful Morning, Dirty Bird
Blue sky :: May dawn blushes Maiden Breast Hills— noisome magpie :: aagk aagk aagk
Georgia O’Keefe’s “Vision of the Black Cross, New Mexico”
There are those for whom The Cross is the phallus church of Christboyo rising triumphant—or rampant in the nunnery; but her cross is the empty neuter nutless prong and crosscock that weighs more than even sunlight and soil— that delineates a great black barrier between pale heaven and what gray we gain of earth— that … Continue reading Georgia O’Keefe’s “Vision of the Black Cross, New Mexico”
My, How the Words Rushed By!
Though they came at me they would not stop. “You will not pay attention,” they said. “You have been attending one stopping at the hospital,” they taunted. “Have you no respect!?” They arrived and fled in one motion. I caught and held one a moment, but it was “Rushed” and would not give even its … Continue reading My, How the Words Rushed By!
To every Season Turn
Churn yearn spurn learn discern concern turn adjourn urn burn.
When a Quartet of Quarters Does Not Answer
A quartet of quarters is a dollar. A dollar does not sing, although the coins ring when you drop them into a vagabond’s fiddle box. And if, under the long shadows and orange light of morning, that vagabond fiddle is joined by a rag-haired guitar, a withered old crone of a cello, and a quavery … Continue reading When a Quartet of Quarters Does Not Answer
Bird Woman Speaks
“I don’t suppose anyone here has ever heard of the Olicanucian Flyinitus,” Robin said. The fireplace light flickered and danced in her small obsidian eyes. “No, Robie, no,” Merle said. “These folk don’t need to hear your misadventures in the Pleistocene.” He spoke quickly and his voice trembled, and we sensed in his warning more … Continue reading Bird Woman Speaks
Marty’s Proposition
One thing you never wanted to do around Marty Malpropiter, if you wanted any sense in a conversation, is let him think the conversation had intellectual underpinnings. As long as you kept to cows, horses, hay, irrigating, barb wire, bowling, football, road building, and such, things went fine. O, Marty may throw in an occasional … Continue reading Marty’s Proposition
Getting an Earful
And suddenly nothing. Nothing. Zip. Miranda Velositer wasn’t saying anything. Nada. A typical hour with Miranda Velositer consisted of at least sixty-eight minutes— sometimes as much as eighty minutes—of monologue. Reggie Velositer would know. He has spent, by his own calculation, twenty-five million hours, give or take, with Miranda. Twenty-five million interminable hours, most of … Continue reading Getting an Earful
Home of Have, Poems by Lee Robison 