That’s the way it happened —
driving into Death Valley,
a crazy idea of escape from
life – divorce and all

Death Valley lives up to its names alright –
Badwater, Skidoo, Ghost Town,
Darwin as in some sort of origin,
and Salt Sea.

Real seas teem with life. Not here, not in this
desert cauldron where I unwittingly sought
an adventure for three kids and a dog. A
test. Something out of the ordinary.

Poets say that’s the way death happens —
in a fairyland of crystal castles,
the promise of desiccated immortality —
drip, drip, drong

Death is as prancy as the Eroica
a flirt of false cadences
discordant landing notes
Death scares the heck out of you

But I’m strong, they say. Still, I should have known by the signs

The sky. There is no sky.
I look up to where the sky should be and see
a shroud of darkness like God has stretched
a black voile over the yellow plain.

The stones
Boulders actually, that magically move at night
with no witnesses, only tread marks in the sand.
Wavy, indeterminate, like the real sea.

The valley is a mirage
a stave of medieval neumes wafered
between black and yellow, distant peaks poke
fiery red in the setting sun. We are trapped in ether.

Our road leads on to watery risings and fallings of human distress.

A mess of men and metal complicates the road.
We have to stop of course. There’s
no way around this pulsating jumble of
helmets, handlebars, kickstands and flesh.

“Excuse me” says a rail-thin fellow clad in some
other animal’s hide. He’s at my driver’s side
pumping moustache, beard and bacca juice
into the window crack.

“Don’t talk to him, Mom,” my two girls order me.
The dog growls deep. Another sign.
“Ma’am, my buddy’s hurt
real bad. Can you help?”

Pen-knives strobe my throat. I hesitate too long,
weighing the fine needle between life and death.
I can’t—I can’t look at the crumpled body but
instead stare down at my idiot sandals.

Two skinheads toss the body into the back of my truck
and cover it with our camping gear.
Bacca Bob and the rest rev their bikes and
disappear in the direction we came from,

their rumble trailing behind them in this vast sub-sea-level desert.

Unearthly silence outside and inside the cab,
kaleidoscopic colors high on the horizon
heat vapors rise in the afternoon breeze
icy contempt from inside.

DO SOMETHING!

Release the clutch
Stomp on the accelerator. Hope for
God’s sake the tailgate might still be unlatched,
and that the body roll out. Free us.

I laugh at the possibility
I yell, shifting the tach up to 7K–redline.
I squeal, flooding the desert with silver decibels.
Sometimes you have to scream just to drown death.

All three kids pat my shoulders and head
in pretended support, the dog moans
with each lurch. They’re petrified
I’ve lost it. It’s a probability.

Behind us, out of the echo-vortex,
a set of high beams and two sets
of rotating red phares
circle the empty desert.

Above, a Piper J-3 Cub swoops down and a deep voice
commands me to STOP –
RIGHT THERE ⎻ TURN OFF
the engine and STAY INSIDE.

Two men in backward-turned baseball caps
jump into the truck bed, haul
the rolled-up body onto a gurney and pop it
into the ambulance.

“Is it alive?” my son whispers, finger-curling my streaked hair.

“Hope so.” The pilot’s shiny medallion belt buckle
presses into the open window, his manicured
fingernails tousle my son’s ragged hair.
The dog whimpers.

He leans far down so I meet his gold-flecked eyes.
“These your kids?” his lips alone smile.
“Yep – mine. Also the dog, but not by birth.”
“Cheeky little tart, you,” deeply, blandly urbane.

Stretching my seat belt forward to turn and reach my son,
“Du liebes Kind, komm, geh mit mir!”
Then I knew. This guy is an Erlkönig,
just like in Goethe’s story. I’m the helpless parent.

The dog leaps across my lap, snarling.
The girls start to shriek, but my son –
my precious son – wraps his arms around
my neck, and sobs “Mommy, he’s touching me!”

Dreadfully slow, I roll the window part way up, insanely
apologizing for my dog’s viciousness.
The pilot strides to his plane and pulls out
a cone of green cellophane. It crinkles in the heat.

I watch his pressed khakis return to the girls’ window.
He offers them each a Bird of Paradise and a
stinking oriental lily. “Little ladies, this is
thanks for being good Samaritans.”

His fingertips slide a gift card for The Inn onto my dash.
“Maybe we’ll see each other there – at my place.”
Maybe not. Gonzo scam. My son sniffs for air.
The girls know, they know…

Their small fluttery hands heave the flowers
through the rear window onto the bed
of the truck where the body had been,
wrapped in our camping gear.

Calm as a porpoise heading to safe harbor
out of the murderous open sea, I skim
the waves of sand and sweating blacktop
to our reserve at Fiddlers’ Campground.

Three kids, a dog, and no more tent, but I’ll make it work. I will. I will.

The fireball sun sneaks under the black caul,
lifting it from the yellow desert.
The rays reach far into the valley,
and then join the twinkling lights ahead.

There is no lucite sky. Maybe it is I
who is upside down, my feet pushing
up off the valley floor. I think I can grab the stars.
If they don’t grab me first.

Stage actress, opera conductor, horse rider — all lives passed but many stories to tell. Prefer the poetic soul of D.H. Lawrence or Louise Erdrich.

A cowboy works hard almost every day
sunrise to sunset and beyond,
but come Saturday night— it’s time to play.

He mends fences, feeds cattle, bales hay,
in withering heat, frigid cold, cloudy skies and clear.
A cowboy works hard almost every day.

Obeys the boss, always yea, never nay,
protects the brand and all within,
but come Saturday night— it’s time to play.

Prevents cattle from being prey,
Cleans the stalls, cares for the horses.
A cowboy works hard almost every day

Biscuits, bacon, eggs, coffee last to midday,
then lunch on the fly and supper at six
but come Saturday night— it’s time to play

When he gathers his pay
he pays his debts, bathes and dons his best duds.
A cowboy works hard almost every day,
but come Saturday night— it’s time to play.

The heart wants / her horses back
—Ada Limon

Everywhere a fly settles,
a twitch on the glossy flank—
the chocolate horse, past her prime,
sides heaving like the cheeks of a trumpeter,
patiently waits for an apple or carrot,
pilfered from my mother’s Frigidaire.
I spider-leg up the dirt road
where muddy water runs down
trickling in a tire rut, meandering
from side to side snake-like.

I have nothing to do but hang from the
paint-flecked gate. It creaks. A wasp
exits a bullet hole in the galvanized fence post.
The mare rushes toward me. One horseshoe
clicks on a rock. Up close, her long-lashed eye,
dome glassy as a fortuneteller’s crystal ball,
reflects me, the weedy pasture, clouds puffing
along the horizon. The apple rests temptingly
on my outstretched palm. She lips it and chomps,
pumps a delighted huff through flared nostrils.

How that last summer, the mare taught me,
a teenage virgin, to ride bareback—
the pleasure of sex without penetration
and betrayal. I was wild, crazy with speed.
And later, night hurtling, clinging to a man’s
warm leathers, my hands clasped
in front of his slim waist, I jockeyed—
the roar of motorcycle vibration
between my knees—his heartbeat
close under my anticipation.

There she was every time nuzzling my palm.
Was she beautiful without me?

Dale Champlin, an Oregon poet, has poems in The Opiate, Timberline Review, Pif, Willawaw, and elsewhere. Her first collection, The Barbie Diaries, was published in 2019, Callie Comes of Age, 2021, and Isadora, 2022. Dale loves nothing more that the scent of juniper and sage. Visit her at dalechamplin.com

Today the cows stared down my car,
They took a stand this time
And owned the road, that much is true,
And so I’ll tell my rhyme.

I saw the car ahead had stopped
I could not figure why.
The brake lights’ red slowed my own pace
I gave a startled cry:

The cows! They walked right in the road
Of Highway 58
They lumbered forward unconcerned,
Some even stopped their gait.

They showed a total unconcern
For being in the way.
They stopped and noticed scenery,
They munched on road-side hay.

They sometimes nudged the ones ahead,
By butting their behinds,
Or bumped each other with a shove
Like true good-natured kines.

Their ears were tagged with orange tabs
I wondered at these markers,
Perhaps these very cows now walked
Toward all too fatal stockyards!

If doom would end this march they took,
Their faces did not show it.
They moved in their full prime of life,
Just as their mooing crowed it.

And now they came upon my car,
And walked long its sides.
A few looked through the windows
And stared into my eyes.

They showed a peace I’d never felt
And only stood a minute,
Then on they went, right by the car
Forgetting I was in it.

And some had calves that walked along
On knobbly-wobbly knees,
And one small calf, all black and white,
Slowed down to look at me.

This last marcher in the troop
Sported no orange tag.
He was the smallest of that bunch,
So no surprise he’d lag.

He touched his nose to my white truck
Right at the left front tire.
He gave his greeting in this way
And looked a little higher

And saw me looking back at him
And then he twitched his ears
He hobbled back into the herd
I put my car in gear.

I’d never before been stopped this way
And I was happier for it.
They slowed me down, they looked at me,
And I could not ignore it.

And later as I drove along
I thought about their faces
How strolling along to an unknown fate
They didn’t rush their paces

Or trouble deaf heaven with mooful cries
Or kick or bite each other.
They walked their road to walk their road
And did not need another.

Irena Praitis is a professor of creative writing and literature at California State University, Fullerton, where she has taught for twenty years. She has no idea how that much time has passed! She is the only parent of her son, Ishaan, and they both love to hike in the outdoors in places like Zion, the Grand Canyon, Crater Lake, Joshua Tree, and the street in front of their home.

I’ve gawked at armies’ actions, vast and organized as ants,
been taken with a pride, the strut of lions, and the stalk.
I’ve gaped at flocks that follow as convincible as lambs
and giggled at a gaggle, honking, hissing, just to talk.

I’ve shuddered at a cackling pack of canines as they skulk’d
and shivered at a wave of little lemmings on the move,
took caution at forebodings of a murder gathering,
seen wakes of swarms’ destruction as they hied home to a hive.

I’ve driven by a drove, and underneath a drift and flight.
I’ve stumbled on a sloth, handed a shrewdness an ovation.
I’ve paid to spot a pod, a gam, and swum out to a shoal.
I tried to meet a gang and chanced upon an exaltation.

I read about the fall and nide, the covert and the covey,
while muster makes me doubt the term I am about to use.
A troop turns to a rout, and as a group becomes a bevy,
I wonder if some creatures aren’t better off in zoos.

James B. Nicola, a returning contributor, is the author of six collections of poetry, the latest being Fires of Heaven: Poems of Faith and Sense. His decades of working in the theater culminated in the nonfiction book Playing the Audience: The Practical Guide to Live Performance, which won a Choice award.

A promise of gold holds them.
Lured by insidious snake tongues,
they’ve discovered a bottomless share

of days into nights. Drop your shifting
from the river’s edge to your token
burlap sack of dust.

Locomotives hissing in the heat
steal your bread and water.

Chuck it in. Call it what it is:
illusions conjured around a campfire
of desperation, feeding off desire.

Lynn Fanok’s new collection of poems, Bread and Fumes, explores the cultural influences of her father’s Ukrainian heritage, and the complexities of being the daughter of a WWII labor camp survivor. Lynn lives with her husband near dairy farms and her backyard is a forest. She leads a poetry series at an independent bookstore.

Blessed be the outlaw.
Lone man lost lingering, on pointy peaks,
Too wild and free to be tamed.
Like a sad dog wandering
With nowhere else to go.

An outlaw and wild man wild like winds.
Blowing through trees, tossing up roots.
I have seen him and I have known him.
I have walked past him
Down dank and dark alleyways.

So praise be to this wanderer.
The sad man trudging, dancing down the plains.
Wandering to places we cannot find.
I alone wish him well
On distant and dangerous journeys.

He wanders as an outlaw of words that whisper.
Pines trees knock together, never the same.
While doors in mountain towns open and shut.
All while a man straightens
A picture on the wall.

Yes they gaze with sharp eyes blue like the sky.
Wild and clear, like lakes in the morning sun.
Where it rained last night with fog on the horizon.
And the sounds of songs lost
To distant passes in the rain.

Matthew Henningsen lives in Colorado, close to the mountains and the prairie. He grew up interacting with the land, and learning about the people who have called it home.

I know you’ve been wanderin’ for many long days
And you’re still prone to wander I know
You’re a hard ramblin’ man in a hard ramblin’ land
With miles and miles left to go

As a child you would say, you would find it someday
Adventure, and a life on the road
It’s been years and it seems, you’re still chasing those dreams
With miles and miles left to go

Miles and miles to the warmth of a bed
Miles and miles just to lay down your head
Miles and miles with a heart made of lead
Miles and miles and then one day you’re dead

Well sometimes your roamin’ will carry you home and
You can’t let your tired heart show
You can only be you for a brief night or two
With miles and miles left to go

And I know you feel small, and at times beaten down
It’s a cold lonely life on the road
There’s no home here for you, and you’re just passing through
With miles and miles left to go

But don’t let your heart get so heavy just yet
You’re too young to carry that load
Your stomach is strong, and your road is still long
With miles and miles left to go

Miles and miles to the warmth of a bed
Miles and miles just to lay down your head
Miles and miles with a heart made of lead
Miles and miles and then one day you’re dead

John Clinkscales is an aspiring poet and author living in Oakland, California. Originally from the East Coast, his work wrestles with the question of American identity in an increasingly fragmented culture, and he considers low-rent travel his official religion.

c. 1832-1914

Just like the storied cowboys of the plains,
Mary finds Montana wild and free.
A liberated slave from Tennessee,
she’s odd in white Cascade, where cigar stains
on six-foot girls are rare. And she retains
her modesty, a shotgun keeping louts at bay.
The liberal mayor lets her drink and play
at cards in his saloon. She masters reins
to beat out angry men for stagecoach routes,
a first for women, making rounds when sun
sears and wind chafes. She wins those bouts,
protects the mail. With laughs and whiskey breath,
she tells of facing wolves one nighttime run
through snow—her knife and shotgun beating death.

Ralph La Rosa’s poetry appears widely on the Internet, in print journals and anthologies, and in the chapbook Sonnet Stanzas and full-length collections Ghost Trees and My Miscellaneous Muse.

Gather ‘round this wood stove
While our bellies are full.
Let me cram a tall-tale down your gullet.
For the steers that we drove
Had been sired by a bull—
An old horny long-horn we called Bullet.

This here Bullet was tired
But each cow, as they say,
Was in œstrus and yearned to be mounted.
So he went out and sired
Forty calves that same day
And the next, more than we could have counted.

We all thought he would quit
But he bellowed for more
When we ran out of cows to be serviced.
So the bull threw a fit
And then charged off to war
Like a conscripted Army reservist.

He was angry, and how!
Pawed his hooves in the ground
And broke loose when we couldn’t restrain him.
He attacked every cow
On the prairie he found
Till we caught him and had to re-chain him.

Bullet’s life had been good
But he finally dropped dead.
As we rode him like rodeo jockeys.
So we saved what we could
And enjoyed, what we said,
Was the best oyster stew in the Rockies.

James A. Tweedie has lived in California, Utah, Scotland, Australia, Hawaii, and presently in Long Beach, Washington. His favorite corner of the West is the Sierra Nevada where he has hiked and fly fished since he was old enough to walk.

Rocky Mountain Utah High
Our cowboy boots drinking Wasatch Provo Girl Beer
Tomorrow we ski in the Best Snow on Earth’s brotherly atmosphere
Gloved hand, Cast-Iron pan, scones to fry
When we try to get a mixed drink here we cry
Hearing the message from Salvation Auctioneer
Eternal life divine revelation cheer
Floating in The Great Salt Lake, keep your eyes dry

Terry Has been painting for over forty five years. Poems in Rue Scribe, Tiny Seed. Winamop, Snapdragon Journal, Poets Choice, Adelaide Magazine, Variant, the Writing Disorder, Ink Pantry, In Parentheses, Ariel Chat, New Ulster, Glove, and in Pamp-le-mousse, North Dakota Quarterly, Barzakh, Urban Arts, Wingless Dreamer, LKMNDS and Elavation.

The old farmer’s hands hung off sinewy arms,
          as though they were constantly holding chocks
          for tractor wheels. Hands trained to clench and twist the wrench
          or caress with a particular snaking motion down the teats of each udder.

Head was permanently bent forward from leaning
          mornings and nights against
          the cow’s solid mass. As he milked,
          he took comfort in her bristly hair
and was rocked by her breath.

His wife had never been further than the next county
          for all their married life
She alone knew the volcano
          that underlay his quiet simplicity.

Sometimes at night he shouted and threw his fists,
          grasped wildly, dreaming of the horses in France.
In sleep, his hands strained to touch them,
          soothe the fright,
          fight off the hurt consuming them.

She knew the boy who enlisted back in that Great War
          to handle war steeds
          never came home.
In his place was the quiet farmer
and his dreams.

Katherine Leonard grew up in the US and Italy living in Massachusetts at the time of John F Kennedy’s assassination and experienced segregation and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination as a high school student in rural Texas. She has been a chemist, a geologist and an oncology nurse/nurse practitioner.

He saddles-up occasionally but a Ram is his ride.
Well-worn chaps and rusty spurs hang on a post near the hay,
Stetson, seven-stitch boots, and brass belt-buckle worn with pride,
in the dim-lit honky-tonk, on payday.
Singers never as purty as Dolly or as country as Hank,
as loved as Willy or the whiskey he drank,
singing tunes made famous by others.
Years of longneck Buds and Camels
made for perfect smoke-rings with ease.
The old man rarely spoke,
but when he sat back and blew
everyone knew,
he was ready to speak.
When he did, he was heard.

I seen plenty when I served in Nam
blacks, Mexicans, Indians, Jews,
some country clods, some city dudes.
Reparations, microaggressions, cultural appropriations
I don’t understand,
I keep it simple.
There’s them with good hearts and them that’s jerks,
and not much in between.
You gotta cull the good from the bad
and hope they do the same.
Any good heart walks through the door
a handshake, a hug, I’ll buy ‘em a beer
and fight any man who shows disrespect.
A jerk is on his own.

Next you ride the prairie,
look high in the sky,
where the elite fly
looking down their noses at fly-over states.
They never prayed for rain to come,
never prayed for rain to go,
many never prayed.
Never baled hay, slopped hogs,
shucked corn or picked peas.
No manual labor for the jet set;
they live off others’ sweat.
But from high on their horses
they righteously proclaim,
what we can and cannot do.
We can’t use certain words
because we might offend,
don’t matter what we intend.
But it’s okay for them to call us
hayseeds, crackers, hillbillies,
hicks, rednecks, honkies
bubbas, bumpkins, and peckerwoods.
Don’t get all hep up about them,
they ain’t worth the worry.
Save your energy for faith, family and friends.

You’re itchin’ to leave small town life,
for bright lights, busy nights.
I don’t begrudge the change,
just don’t judge us who stay,
to see sunrise glory, feel sunset peace,
and reflect under the Milky Way.

You boys, sowin’ oats, you need to learn,
women ain’t objects for gratification,
they’re humans with feelings, hopes, and dreams.
If they want to work support’em,
if they look down their noses at mothers and wives
give’em room,
if they’re married stay away,
if they cuss to act tough, they are as dumb as men.
Don’t git catawampus ‘bout looks,
if they’re hung up on purty let’em be.
If you find one who is comfortable within her own skin,
who’s honest and will work with you,
saddle up, get to work,
be honest with them,
see what you can build.
Love ain’t just frolicking,
though that’s a good part.
It’s doin’ for her —
and appreciating what she’s doin’ for you.
It’s working together on what’s right.
If you have children,
teach’em to saddle and care for their own horses,
give them plenty of rope,
and raise them to live with someone else,
from the day they’re born.
When they make mistakes
(and they will)
make sure they accept responsibility,
experience consequences
and learn what is right.
Yelling what’s wrong
won’t do as much as showing what’s right.
If they are falling,
(unless they are in danger)
let’em fall,
but giv’em a hand up.
Do not expect what you do not live.
Enjoy the ride,
they grow up fast.

If your needs are met —
don’t sweat the wants.
If you get some wants enjoy them
but understand,
they don’t make you a better person.
No horse, no saddle, no boot, no buckle
helps you treat people better.
My trailer provides shelter —
a bathroom, a kitchen with ample food,
a bed, a closet filled with clothes,
a television and comfy recliner.
My needs are met.
My truck —
gets me from A to B
holds hay and supplies.
My needs are met.
If I get better shelter, a better truck,
I will enjoy them,
but I’m not a better person.

Don’t judge by the color of skin,
house size, fancy car, powerful truck,
amount of money or looks.
See how people care
for friends, for family, for their horses.
If they smile freely, listen to others,
say thank you and you’re welcome,
then look them in their eyes,
shake their hands,
support them in bad times,
celebrate together in good times,
and build friendships that last.

Jeral Williams is a poet residing in Mobile, Alabama. His formative years were in Western Kansas. He believes you can take the boy out of the West, but you can not take the West out of the man.

The Meatpacker Who Used to Be a Bull Rider

gets up at dawn so he can be at the plant
before traffic hits the freeway. The stench
of blood and excrement thick on his steel-toed
work boots from yesterday. First thing
the hydraulic knocker bucks his arm—
sends a jolt to his shoulder.

Sometimes he thinks wildness was kicked
clean out of him—the last time after a fight
at Rusty Coyote Bar, a pool cue busted across
his back, one front tooth gone missing
landing on that same arm—the one torn loose
in a cut-short ride—pulled clean out of its socket
never set right.

That time, the time at the bar, he woke up
in the stall, nose pressed against porcelain
one eye mashed onto urine-soaked tile.
Took him all of five minutes to crawl up
off the floor. His head rung like a son-of-a-bitch.
What was that fight about?

Maybe one of the bar girls, Crystal, that was it,
the bartender had a shine on her. That night
he was probably too slow or stupid-drunk
to spot the signal. All he wanted was a roll
in Motel 6.

When the brain-dead cow shoots up hooked
by the hind hoofs he steps back quick
and awkward—ready for the next slaughter. 

Violets

Chores done, Callie heads to the draw—
icy mountain runoff just bearable
this early in the spring. The word violet—
how close it is to violence.

What was the connection? Sagebrush violet,
yellow prairie violet, and out toward
Idaho the gorgeous Beckwith’s violet.
Callie strips and gets a toehold of water—

not too cold. A Cinnamon teal drake
startles up with a clatter of wings. Callie
plunges under, her hair streaming
behind her like the wake of an otter.

She remembers climbing her daddy’s
legs when she was little. Skin-the-cat
he called it. When her feet reached
his chest—how she sprung into the air.

Callie dries off with her work shirt
pulls on jeans and worn boots.
Scrambling up the embankment
she stops dead—eye to eye with a fat
rattler sunning itself on a ledge.

Ever since Dale Champlin’s daughter married a bull rider she’s been writing cowboy poems. From her early days hiking in the Black Hills of South Dakota to the bleachers at Pendleton Roundup, summers camping at Lake Billie Chinook, Dale’s poetry has been imbued with the smell of juniper and sage. “Callie Comes of Age” is forthcoming from Cirque Press.

Got twin guns and holsters for Christmas,
always get them. A cowboy can’t work
without side arms.

Such shooters!
Exact Roy Rogers replicas,
pearl handled counterfeits,
long barrels,
chrome bullet chambers,
real cap rolls that explode
with such force I see sparks flash
before my eyes.
They coil like wounded snakes
and smell like burnt matches.
My nose twitches at the odor,
but that’s life for a cowboy.

Holsters, the finest on the block,
genuine leather made from a cow.
I figure that’s the “cow” in cowboy,
I’m the other part.
Fringe rawhide strings hang
so low they tickle my bare knees
in summer time.
Roy really knows how to dress.

Got to meet the gang at the hideout
and form a posse to trail desperadoes.
When we find the bad guys,
there’ll be a big shoot-out.
Nobody gets hurt, though.
That’s the way Roy likes it.

Jack Eisenman is Professor emeritus at Palm Beach Atlantic University.
He has written poetry since the early 1960’s. Jack enjoys writing nostalgic poems about growing up in Greenville, South Carolina.

With a pop top,
a stutter step
and a shudder of thrill under string-lights;

a boot slide
and a buckle flash
in a chorus of pedal-steel nights;

my gun-grip hand,
your denim waist,
a waltz of sheer terror and awe;

the band roared
and so did you:
you had me at YEEHAW.

J. M. Jordan recently began writing again after a twenty-year hiatus. He is a Georgia native, a Virginia resident, and a homicide detective by profession.

When I first saw this kitchen, so far from my
New York walk-up, I could picture Mavis, Daniel’s Ma,
clear as day—her attempts at domesticity—
the red-checkered curtains, Brillo-polished
cast-iron stove, whitewashed walls.

Here’s a tomato spattered index card.
It looks like chile was one of her favorites.
I soak beans, black, kidney and pinto, fire-roast
peppers, wash off the black skin, add plenty
of garlic, onions, tomatoes, and cayenne.
The first taste burns my tongue.

From the kitchen window, I fixate
on the chicken run, the strut and squabble
almost human. They tussle quarrelsome
and miserly over a prized grasshopper
or blade of spring grass.

Looking out over the pasture,
how still I become. In middle-distance
a mirage rises—a pool of mercury shimmer,
cloud shadows lace the cropped foothills.

Eagles soaring on updrafts, high
as non-existent cloud cover, survey me
through the window. Their all-seeing eyes
make me out plain as anything.

Mesmerized by Daniel’s tumbler glittering
in the dish rack, I shuffle and glide
through morning, light-stepping to Phillip Glass
on the classical station, the repetition echoed
by mourning doves in the scrub oaks.

I can almost disregard the revolver
on the countertop, the coils of bailing and barbed
wire, oil-soaked shotgun cleaning rags,
rat droppings in the corners, the crackle of black widow cobwebs.

Ever since Dale Champlin’s daughter married a bull rider she’s been writing cowboy poems. From her early days hiking in the Black Hills of South Dakota to the bleachers at Pendleton Roundup, summers camping at Lake Billie Chinook, Dale’s poetry has been imbued with the smell of juniper and sage.

He emerged into the smoke bitten air, more
than glad to greet clocking off with a charge
of slim white sticks saluting the sky.

The dragons with diamond eyes glittered, as he
appeared and he knew he was the news in town.
He pulled his collar up to his ears and, eyes down,

made the march through a rustle of women –
all ears for an utterance of shame – he was
the villain of the piece, this they knew for sure.

They had their powder rooms to retire to
and bitch, where could he put his piece forward
with a snifter of Scotch? He grinned to think

of his comrades talking of their hard treatments
and banishments at the hands of their proud
womenfolk, interrupting commentary on boxed

ears and knife fights of the street. Still, when he
shunted open the door at the Goat & Nightgown,
he could see, if he hadn’t felt it by now, it was a night

for hard drinking. He’d had a recce at Smelter’s
Corner at lunch, where you went for tradition
when your life was in the gutter but the slap-faced

dames who made perch from Accounts, shrieking
like banshee dancers put him off. He threw his black
felt trilby on the bar with relief, ‘The usual, Jim,’ he said.

This would be the dame’s last chance, he’d given
her several, and if she bottled out this time, evinced
another excuse to stay in this rat-hole, dung-heap town,

with the nodding dogs for yes-men and their hollow
-eyed stooges, no horse or ambition, he’d not stay
to be run out by hoodlums and their molls, no fear,

but he’d be buckled for dust in the morning.

Sarah is a surrealist, poet-playwright, based in Scotland. She has degrees in creative subjects from Leeds, UEA and Birmingham U’s, life was more structured in academia. On the outside it’s more surreal. But what is real? Aren’t we all constructions? Enjoy the journey.

Nightshift Cowboy

He brands cow pies
and rounds up fries
at Burger Bob’s
from 10 o’clock
till closing time
when he hops in his Mustang
and rides into the sunrise.

Cowboy’s Stent

It felt like
I’d swallowed
an electric fence.

The medicine men
reckon
a heart attack.

Sent me and a posse
to the Bill show
with a bag of balloons.

Made me foreswear
the bed-house
and shun the saloons.

Back at the ranch
I pop a pannier
full of pills

Corralled by
get-well cards
and a muckheap of bills.

Frank William Finney was born in Massachusetts and educated at the University of Massachusetts at Boston and Simmons University. He has recently retired from teaching literature at Thammasat University in Thailand, where he taught for 25 years. He is currently employed as the caretaker of three cats: Fluffernutter, Karma, and Dappledots. They sometimes watch him while he taps or scribbles.

They have a million silences to choose
from, grown from inner wildness and
outer tameness, or vice versa:
so communication daunts
novices. But when a cat wants
something particular,
he’ll use
a dialect. My cat—mews.

After he laps his milk
he licks his fur
turning his inner forepaws
back to silk.

Then, when desiring nothing, he will purr,
the inner calm
filling the room with sound as incense laces it with scent.

Though animal,
in his caprice
there’s cause:
he’s not entirely ignorant
of moods. Like a sudden squirt of balm
he plops on a needy lap
(his weight is a surprise
as herbal cream is cool,
at first). But then he spreads and casts a nap—
his purrs’ Tibetan rhythms hypnotize—
as if he knew I needed a spell of peace.

The opalescent eyes’
almond form
frames an in-lit mystery,
the hallmark of the species’ history.
Behind, something cold as an ancient god
in a trice turns into a friend and warm
while seemingly staying as wild, and as wise.

I waken soon more balanced, as if I
had fallen likewise from a tempting tree
and also had a tail. He looks at me
and leaks a certain dulcet rumbling sound,
with those Buddha eyes again dilating
betraying nothing
while implying everything—
or is it the other way around?

Then on a whim,
suddenly knowing I’m no longer needing him,
he’s off, like wind, to caress everyone.
I think he heard my neighbor’s pre-school son
who adores the cat—
for rougher, wilder reasons,
both being resilient, prehensile, and
able to adapt to souls and seasons
like that.

They rassle on the grass. Then, as if to understand
like me, the boy’s eyes fix upon the almond eyes,
expecting perfection, open to surprise.

A True Chili alum, James B. Nicola’s latest full-length poetry collections are Out of Nothing: Poems of Art and Artists (2018) and Quickening: Poems from Before and Beyond (2019). His nonfiction book Playing the Audience won a Choice award. He hosts the Writers’ Roundtable at Manhattan’s Columbus Library: walk-ins welcome.

The rain was falling hard today,
this morning it almost made me go blind,
until a brown cottontail bunny stood in my way,
informing me all would be just fine.

He said, “Be careful cowboy, as you drive,
beware the puddles in the road,
son keep your eyes open like you are alive,
please don’t run over the Goddamn toad!”

I was in sudden shock,
my breathing went kind of wild,
I simply didn’t know how to act!
This brown bunny was reprimanding me like I was a child,
such a thing I did never expect!

As this torrid rain fell so thickly,
I could hear him loud and clear!
Was this experience the product of some dark magician’s trick?
Why did I feel I should ever fear?

Though I plodded along ever so slowly in my car,
still I heard this bunny speak,
I perceived his voice though I passed him far,
my blood ran cold until I felt weak.

“Well have a nice day as you muddle along,
son take great care as you drive,
for should your wheels e’er slide so wrong,
you might not make it back home alive.”

When I glanced up,
looking backward in my mirror,
this brown cotton tailed bunny hopped on off.
I strayed from the road and toward a tree I drove nearer,
only to make it back on with the extra time I had bought.

This author is a national & international academic/ ESL instructor. He has been an author for over thirty years now, being published in a variety of journals, magazines and by a number of companies. He loves traveling, archeology and many other outdoor activities. What he loves most of all, however, is meeting new interesting people who are some of his loyal fans.