Editor’s note: In this week’s Poetry Corner, GT features the work of Joseph Millar, the author of “Fortune,” published by Eastern Washington University Press. His first book, “Overtime,” (EWU, 2001), was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. He spent 25 years in the East Bay working as a telephone installation foreman. He now lives in Eugene, Ore., and teaches at Pacific University’s Low Residency MFA Program. 
LYRICALThe spaniel next door yaps at the sparrows,
he yaps at the crows and the mailman,
yaps at the compost pile and the sunflower,
yaps at the rain and the sky. He yaps
at the steps leading down to the creek
where the flax plants bloom high as my waist
and blue flowers force their way up
through small stones the color of night. He
yaps at the garbage truck’s back-up beeper,
iron bell song of the priest and bridegroom,
song of the lone ship, song of the train,
song of the big waves rolling and breaking
over the western reefs. He yaps at the rosebush,
yaps at the fence, song of the sidewalk cracked
in half, the wine bottle resting against the curb,
the neighbor who doesn’t come home.
FEEDING TRISTEM’S SNAKELight brings out nubs in the black felt rug
spattered with chalky waste so like a bird’s
which the rat is trying to scurry beneath
having sensed something wrong in the stillness.
This rat I’ve hand-fed popcorn and raspberries,
pink feet and round hairless tail
translucent, shivering behind the glass.
I hover above, pale version of Shiva
who yesterday smote the arched vault
of the termite, hacked open
the ant’s teeming galleries, tore out
webbed roots of kudzu and columbine
put the torch to the wasp’s paper cells,
entranced by the row of dark
emblems flowering down the scaled back,
the bone seam dividing her sloped
naked face as the jaws unhinge
and the great throat surges.
REDWINGHere’s where they make the good work shoes
in the long brick buildings beside the road.
Shoes whose stitched, crepe-wedged soles
and full-grained, oil-resistant leathers
bless tiny bones in the ankles and feet, shoes
of carpenters balanced on roof beams,
electricians, farmers, iron workers, welders—
cuffs frayed with sparks from the torch.
At shift’s end the socks emerge tinged
pale orange, tops of the arches crisscrossed
with lace marks, propped up in front
of the six-o’clock news. Here’s to the sweet
breath of pond mist filling the lungs of summer.
Here’s to baked beans and twelve hours off.
Here’s to dust from the trucker’s shoes, dust
he stepped into three states back.
Here’s to shingles, aluminum flashing,
wall studs, rafters, ten-penny nails,
here’s to tomatoes, onions and corn,
here’s squatting down and here’s reaching over,
here’s to the ones who showed up.
SISTERS RODEOThe Metolius keeps flowing north,
its steep drops tumbling, ashen and cold,
juniper wood bleached in cheatgrass,
big field jammed with pick-ups and trailers.
Inside the arena Resistols and Stetsons
bend up toward high-voltage floodlights
and the queen canters over a raked dirt oval,
her buckskin’s mane latigo-braided, black chaps
spangled with gold. The season’s dream raffle,
a Dodge Cummins Diesel, squats by the
barbeque pit.
If I have a twin in the world next to this one
I hope he’s a rodeo cowboy
coming sideways out of the shoot
on a white brahma bull named Pipestone
while the mountains crack loose from their axis,
Broken Top, Three-Finger Jack and the Sisters,
while meteors burn and flare overhead
and the frozen stars veer back and forth
for a full eight seconds of the twenty-first century
under a red summer moon.
 favorite (27) ~  quote ~ Views: 500
Powered by AkoComment Tweaked Special Edition v.1.4.2 |
