The trail was dusty, me with my bandana pulled up tight,
I’m riding my trusty horse and I see a familiar cactus off to the right.
Knowing then I only had a few more miles to go,
I could feel my horse’s anticipation begin to grow,
he knew what waited there as well as I did.
So the pace was picked up and we went galloping ahead.
Just beyond that near-by ridge I’ll be able to see,
the sight of the town of Tombstone where soon we will be.
It’s going to be another hot Arizona afternoon,
and as soon as I can I’ll be standing at the bar in Belle’s Saloon.

Belle’s a very classy lady with some good business sense.
She came out west 10 years ago, a woman of no pretense.
All the way from Boston town where once she had a hattery.
The finest hats for the ladies until she was arrested for assault and battery.
There was a gentleman caller who wasn’t like a gentleman at all.
Belle quickly with her knee put him in his place,
but the gentleman was a lawyer and Belle had to take a fall.
1 year later she was free to go but with her disgrace,
no shop or inventory did she retain.
With a little money stashed away, she started thinking of where
should she try starting over again.
Out west, people talk of all the fantastic opportunities out there.

When Belle hit town and she looked around,
her face developed a scowl and a frown.
She stood there now in front of the town’s town hall,
she didn’t see much of a market for fine ladies hats at all.
Upon a tour of the town there was a sign she found,
outside of an old dry goods store, said it was for sale.
A visit to the bank where the title was held,
yielded Belle the place paid in full, she could only pray she wouldn’t fail.
She knew the town was full of mining men and cattlemen and money to be made,
figuring her chances would be very good if here she stayed.
Her place was on the main drag, right on Allen Street,
seemed like it was somewhere everyone liked to congregate and meet.
With some long days of cleaning and painting,
decorating and some major renovating.
Belle finally hung up her sign for her new business.
It didn’t take long and it became a big success.
When it came to the name of the place, she kept it simple and short,
“Belle’s Saloon” that’s good enough, that’ll do I heard her report.

Now a half past noon,
finally arriving here after riding all the way from Dragoon.
After eating all that dust along the way,
I’m standing at the bar and here I’ll stay
Waiting for a cold one, hoping it gets here soon,
then I’ll be just another happy cowboy hanging out in Belle’s Saloon.

After a successful career as a Senior Designer working with international mining companies, William David is retired now and living in Tucson, Az. He likes spending time now devoted to his passion: writing and reading poetry. William writes for his pleasure and for the pleasure of those who might read his poems.

A Ballad for Singers of Ballads

with thanks to the Lomax family, many anonymous artists, and those still singing

In the land of the hermit thrush,
where none but mountains range.
In the land of the hermit man,
a land where time is strange—

The stories wear their leather boots,
and traipse from vale to hills.
And with them songs likes larks will rise,
and spout about like rills.

Some inch about in ink of night,
and gather chills for spines.
They brush the dust from off the graves,
and tumble bones for signs.

While others stalk about in day,
to rope and lasso word,
to punch the lost doughies of tune
and gather all that’s heard.

Where cowboy knights and prisoned queens
all offer up their songs.
Where Nellie Gray comes back at last,
but Lead Belly still longs.

Where Jesses James and Casey Jones
keep pace with Silver Jack.
Time’s coat wears thin, but wraps you in
and ever draws you back—

To fires in fields, and hearts, and hearths
That burn since time began,
and voice must rise up to the skies,
in these most longing lands.

For the Lonesome Road Home

To look within your eyes it must have been
A long and lonesome bone dry dirt road home.
That it is the kind of red akin to sin,
With dust and grit to follow where you roam.
It lines your face with stories writ in blood.
Of nights you gnawed your fist for lack of love,
For lack of love and beans and then the flood
That came and washed with mud like hand and glove,
And after that one damp there came the heat,
A baking bronze without a place to hide—
No rest for dead men standing on their feet;
No rest for living anywhere besides—
The hell you made it after all these years.
The pain’s long gone; the eyes too dry for tears.

Olivia Lee Stogner is a writer and English professor. She is committed to social justice work, supporting Fair Trade companies, and her racial equity community group. She loves traveling, books, art, listening to music, the woods around her home, and spending time with her sister and their dogs.

A couple of guitars, banjos, and broken verses,
won’t stop this band from rehearing,
all the lyrics written from way back in time.

A few strings have been broken,
fixed and played while rehearsing,
every story, musically in mind.

Country boots has been polished,
jeans pressed and stylish,
worn since the song began.

Stage has been made,
designed for the days,
we play these songs again.

Shiela Denise Scott, Creative has earned a Digital Photography A.A.S at Antonelli College. Her Skills assisted her with story presentation that she learned at Full Sail University, where she graduated with a Creative Writing for Entertainment Bachelors degree. Her talent has touched on political issues, but mainly speaks on love, morals, and simple pleasures of humanities.

You may connect with her on social media
https://www.facebook.com/PoetShielaDeniseScott

Goodness, not what we’ve expected here at this roadside barbecue.
A surprise, not so much the old bearded man flipping the burgers.
Nor reindeer playing reindeer games. But Mrs. Claus is a soprano.

She sings White Christmas and other snowy things in sun’s heat.
How lovely it bellows, her musical dream, as if the future is now,
as if now goes through here, a united getaway on a shared journey.

Her melody lofts over the smoking ribs, the corn on the cobb,
and watermelon too. And she sings in tune perfectly. Seems
all seasons, always now, a flawless time for such wintry reverie.

Might have to join her and sing our cowboy dreams right along.
Now it’s Silver Bells and we’re ringing in the peaceful twilight,
ever cool, and tossing horse shoes as well. With the affable elves.

Joe Bisicchia writes of our shared dynamic. An Honorable Mention recipient for the Fernando Rielo XXXII World Prize for Mystical Poetry, his works have appeared in numerous publications. His website is www.JoeBisicchia.com.

The Door Opens

I startle
to see my husband
in the doorway,
his spine curving like a birch
in a forest leaning toward the light
or arched like the pillar of a harp.
These days, I lean on him lightly.
Age bends us to its will.
I well up with loving him.
His arms are filled
with birdsong.

In Trouble

I sat under my father’s glare,
my eyes socketed
in fright. I know how it is to not dare swing
your Mary-Janed feet or rest an elbow
on the table or squeak your fork against the plate
or spill milk from the glass in your trembling hand.

I know how it is to squeeze your thighs together
so you won’t wet yourself
when your father bangs on the table,
making the dishes jump
because you couldn’t keep your mouth shut
and he could see the mush while you ate

or have your mother not say, “Oh, leave the child
alone already, will you?”
There is always some trouble
a little girl can make
if a father watches for it.

Rochelle Jewel Shapiro’s novel, Miriam the Medium (Simon & Schuster, 2004), was nominated for the Harold U. Ribelow Award. Her poetry has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize, and she won the Branden Memorial Literary Award from Negative Capability. She currently teaches writing at UCLA Extension.

Deep in the mountains of Jalisco,
Christmas was celebrated with the flesh of bulls.
Slit by the edge of the matador before becoming breakfast the next day.

On my uncle’s busted down barely functional pickup truck.
We moved through towns, crossing cattle ranches
and resting fields of corn that prayed for rain.

Without insurance or seat belts, we rode on the trucks bed.
Moving through bumpy roads riddled with potholes.
Praying for our souls to stay in place.

The corn in the tortillas came from my uncle’s field.
Ground and mixed into masa by my aunt’s wrinkly hands.
Like the smack in the face salsa,
formed from the garden and crushed in the molcajete.

At a cousin’s baptism party we ate meat or what we thought was meat.
Only to find out from my brother that it was blood
from the morning slaughter of pigs.
Stirred up with onions and salt.

For we were never allowed to celebrate life
without taking one in exchange.

Ramon Jimenez is an educator and writer from Seattle, Washington. Mr. Jimenez works as a high school social studies and language arts teacher. Along with teaching, he runs a writing program for youth called, “The Boot,” where young people can develop their voice through poetry, spoken word, rap and storytelling. Ramon enjoys writing poetry and short stories that focus on immigrant communities, geopolitics, culture and travel.

People tend to keep to themselves around here.
But true residents flood the saloon until lukewarm ale spills over glass rims,
and raucous group laughter fills the air.

Rafael rides into town on Sunday after church lets out.
Those who catch sight of him, before he shifts to the outskirts, see him sign la cruz.

Hart rides in on a black horse and blends into the saloon’s floor and ale and blood.
The whores find him charming, handsome
the barmen find him strong, capable.
Hart finds himself on the outskirts after too many glasses,
puking into what little vegetation grows.

Pendejo, go get sick somewhere else. Rafael sits on a large rock,
stained rough hands over a small fire.
Ain’t no problem, Hart slurs, falling backward
The stars blur together in the ink tapestry of the sky

It’s a problem to me, Rafael frowns, pulls the darkness around himself
Hart laughs, the vibrations of his chest move the stars
Rafael soon lays down as well, sees the stars shake across the sky,
What are you?

Hart laughs harder, I ain’t ever been a good man.
Rafael sighs, he reaches out and quenches the fire with his hand,
Not much left to do good with, he says.
Hart lolls his head to the side, looks at Rafael

Pull those stars down here, since you stubbed the fire,
he sighs and rests a hand on his stomach, not much of a host, are you?
Rafael’s frown lightens, the stars come a bit closer, light their bodies
splayed side by side, warm the chill from their bones.

I don’t usually have company.
Hart smiles, that much I can tell.
The light of the stars glints off their eyes, crinkled at the corners,
their smiles embroidered onto the sky.

Brianna Simmons roams museum exhibits like an anthropological cryptid. Looking for inspiration in every corner, cranny, and cranium, she writes about humans through the lens of curiosity.

Counting winters, pondering the Buddha
nature of cattle; at dusk, memory
becomes gentle, breathing self-indulgent.
He rises, and history flops in folds
around his feet like ill-fitted clothing.
He steps out and kicks it aside convinced
he can find a better fit. Emptiness
wakes unbidden, a dark suckling that drains
his veins and curdles his marrow as it
sidles intimately up his backside
into its familiar spot beneath the
catch in his voice and whispers apropos
of nothing: cull this heart from the herd.

Judith Solano Mayer is a Pacific Northwest transplant. Her cowboy-sympathetic ganglion can be traced through both sides of the familia back to the original vaqueros from which it morphed, sadly, into its current armchair version.

We said we would rest
only for a moment,
water the horses and return to the fields.

But then the stars descended,
peering through the smoke of our fire
and the dust of the prairie

so you suggested we lay down,
accept the clarity of the skies
for the gift that it was.

But I could not keep my focus
on the comets
and the constellations.

My mind wandered instead
to the space between us, lingering on lips
that named stars I’d never seen

and as you mapped the sky
with your callused hands,
I saw the shining of your eyes

and I realized you belonged there,
lightyears from the ground
and the grime between us.

Emily Uduwana is a poet, short fiction author, and graduate student based in Southern California. When she isn’t writing or studying, she can be found watching Netflix with her husband and a grumpy little dog named Percy.

I crossed through North Dakota
On a quest only know to me
It started with a lady
Who hailed from Tennessee
With hair of fire
And eyes to match
Her fury set
As a briar patch
She left some shattered dreams
On the lonesome road behind her

In Kansas she was Miss Kitty
In Texas she was Madam Red
When I caught up with her in Saint Lou
Her story endured in my head
A wild mustang
Must be broke
By a cowboyW
ho can stoke
A fire hotter than she had felt
On the lonesome road behind her

By midnight, our paths had crossed
She coyly told me she was lost
An icy heart she could defrost
But she never would be bossed
This cowboy needs
A wife whose true
I proposed midstride
She said, “adieu”
Leaving a trail of dust to toss
On the lonesome road behind her

Andy Betz has tutored and taught in excess of 30 years. He lives in 1974, and has been married for 27 years. His works are found everywhere a search engine operates.

One July morning
my older brothers Mark and Ty
hopped into the bed of Pa’s red pick-up
to burn the wheat crops

A controlled burn, they called it
the kind to kill off the old stuff
and fertilize the soil for soybeans

I wanted to join them
but had to sit on the kitchen countertop
and help Ma stir the chicken soup

In October, Mark joined the Marines
we held him tight, cheered
and Pa drove him two hours
to the airport in Wichita

Early July came ‘round again
and Ty and Pa set flame to the wheat together
just the two of ‘em

I watched from the front porch
as black smoke covered the Kansas sky
and thought how good it would feel
to let the fire take over

Mark came home that September
I hugged him on the gravel driveway
his arms stayed at his sides
I couldn’t squeeze him any harder

Come December, Ty left the ranch
with his girlfriend
he had joined the Marines, too

I screamed and tore his room apart

When Ty came back he was in a box
Momma cried, folded flag in hand
as they lowered the casket into a summer lawn

First week of July a few years later
and the sun was dripping hot and thick

I rode shotgun with Pa
his Semper Fidelis tattoo
sunk deep in his shoulder
the pick-up crunched over path
we plowed to contain the blaze

The fire break

I rolled the window down
lit a gasoline-soaked towel
I had wrapped around a stick

Stuck the torch out the window
let it lick the brown crops as we drove
I didn’t miss a single stalk

orange flames ate the dry wheat
and the sky to blackness

Cole Depuy’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in The Penn Review, Boston Accent, Heartwood, pacificREVIEW and elsewhere. He is a Ph.D. student at SUNY Binghamton’s Creative Writing Program and recipient of the Provost’s Doctoral Summer Fellowship.

Rough and untended they roamed,
in herds, crossed the lines of my life,
trampled the tended
I had sunk my roots.

In my twenties they were sexy,
pranced, in heat and in rut,
neighed their nonsense,
their romance on the cheap.

Untidily lined, not properly broken in,
they stamped their stanzas
into disarray, unbehooved
in their unruly revelling.
Later, their will to power wilted
and they grazed more
attentively, chomped, smacked
their thoughts more carefully.

And now, grey in mane,
they home in, congregate,
rounded up, rubbed down,
aligned, the stockman tolerated.

Bart Nooteboom’s philosophy blog is at: http://philosophyonthemove.blogspot.nl. You can also find bundles of items at www.bartnooteboom.nl arranged by theme.

His book: ‘Uprooting economics; A manifesto for change’ was published by Edward Eklgar in December, 2019.

We were rangers
on the plains
at peace with the predators
sleeping in the cool night air
the crunch of dry grass beneath
our horses’ hooves
pricking our ears
leather cracking like dry skin
clouds rolling in
painting whirligigs in the sky
winds twirling them ‘round
pointing us home
to shelter
and apple pie
with hot rum
a warm bath
and a cool night’s
sleep

Arianna Sebo is a poet and writer living in Southern Alberta with her husband, pug, and five cats. Her poetry can be found in Kissing Dynamite, The Coachella Review, Front Porch Review, and 45 Poems of Protest: The Pandemic. Follow her at AriannaSebo.com and @AriannaSebo on Twitter and Instagram.

When fields bloom dust

the town once had a picture show with balcony
and jujubes and news shorts about some war
and cartoons where animals met violent ends

when life was black and white it maybe cost a dime
Realto or Roxy Princess or Palace can’t remember
the name with velvet curtains and uniformed ushers

the marquee paint faded in yellow bruises and paper
promos blotched like mottled skin beneath cataract
glass the show moved out when the drugstore closed

when the doctor died and the Farmers Insurance Co.
repossessed our farm and sold our tractor for a quarter
on the dollar I watched them haul away the dining room

table and grandma’s chester drawers the two mules that
pulled our cart gone too with two cows and a calf
they left Dad’s neckerchief once red now pale as

platelets our fields bloom dust from withered vines
and dust covers the town square a stray cat’s mew
whines like a nail hammered into coffin pine

Time spinning shadows

I can’t grow wind he said to her
as he stood in the field once black
from prairie fire once rich in topsoil
now the shade of cadavers just dead

Gone where life had grown his family
gone too parents and grandparents and
even prior generations like seasons
remembering rows of crop and hands

Turning now what turns is the rows of
windmills that loom and lurch metal
beasts that whir like locusts eating
not breezes singing within the stalks

The bank that repossessed his legacy
withered on spent vines suggested wind
sell air they said your day’s done let the
windmills work the land you failed

What spins are my hands wringing
calloused knuckles grinding skin
once tanned and creased and split
a map for my children to follow

That map useless as dry parchment cracked
what can I do he wailed with idle hands
sit and watch time spin shadows on our
land now the bank’s I can’t grow wind

Morning Mist

On weekdays, always hot in the southern South,
I’d smell the coffee before even awake,

even through the humidity, as present as the family dog,
my dreams made brown from the blackening dregs,

then hear him gently banging cupboards,
trying to still the family’s sleep.

He’d ease the door and touch my foot, saying,
“Come on bud, the day’s awake,”

and I’d rise to meet him, me, alone, the others abed,
my feet on the warmth of the cedar floors, his warmth

having walked ahead. There on the table he’d set two mugs,
his coffee as black as the fields we worked, mine, with milk,

the color of November dawn. He’d chow down on bacon and eggs,
dabbing ketchup on each bite. I tried to match him mouth for mouth,

falling short by an egg or two. “Can you feel the change, bud?
Saw them geese flyin’ farther south and the wooly worms out, too.

Cold is coming, but there’s time to plant some turnips or collards
for mom to can when winter hits. So eat up, boy, we got work to do,”

tussling my hair of winter wheat. Then off we’d trudge.
I jumped to match each step he strode, I the circle

from the stone he’d throw. Once in the field, he took
the heavy load, the spade and rake while I sprinkled seeds

on the rows he hoed. I wasn’t needed to work the land.
He gifted me the morning mist.

Steve Gerson, an emeritus English professor from a Midwestern community college, writes poetry and flash about life’s dissonance and dynamism. He’s proud to have published in Panoplyzine (winning an Editor’s Choice award), The Hungry Chimera, Toe Good, The Write Launch, Route 7, Duck Lake, Coffin Bell, Poets Reading the News, Crack the Spine, Riza Press, White Wall Review, Variant, Abstract, Pinkley Press, Montana Mouthful, the Decadent Review, and In Parenthesis.

Duke was a dog
With a very strange walk
And he’d cross the saloon oh so slowly.
He’d chew as he walked
And the drift of his talk
Was he’d bite your hand off if you raised it.
His watery eyes
And shaggy old thighs
Didn’t make you see
Past his incisors
And just when you thought
He’d loped past with his throat
Desert dry he’d turn round
And bark: “Remember the Alamo!”

One day in the bar
Duke encountered a fair
Signorita named Lola, a Collie –
He took off his hat
And said, “Ma’am”
That was that
Now they have sixteen pups
round the Red River Valley

If you should see Duke
Sniffing round this back lot
Don’t you worry,
He ain’t got the rabies.
Just that look in his eye
Says the frontier ran dry
And now dogs have to howl
In the movies.

But Duke he don’t mind,
In a saddle he’ll find
Oil and sandalwood
All that you’d sniff in dreams
But he wakes up to find
On the lot where the blinds
Shuttered houses
The horses have fled the fields.
And John Wayne’s retired,
The studio head’s fired
And TV’s the only place left to feel
Wind on the prairie
And Clint Eastwood’s hairy
Wool blanket: the stars are so cold
When you can’t get asleep to dream.

Atar Hadari’s “Songs from Bialik: Selected Poems of H. N. Bialik” (Syracuse University Press) was a finalist for the American Literary Translators’ Association Award and his debut collection, “Rembrandt’s Bible”, was published by Indigo Dreams in 2013. “Lives of the Dead: Poems of Hanoch Levin” was awarded a Pen Translates grant and is out now from Arc Publications. He contributes a monthly verse bible translation column to MOSAIC magazine.

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