Anuja Ghimire
Blue Mimosa pg. 210
Moonlight slides
off the cascade
Momentos fall
out of my closet
ballet with your sweater
tango
with your scarf
cling
to the doors
that dance
lend my eyes
to the lamppost
lay my heart
on the highway
and my sighs
on the curve
My blue lips await
your homecoming
your venom kiss
Mitchel Tracy
There Are No Footprints In The Sand pg. 37
Behind me there are only hungry waves
lapping up every trace
of my single set of tracks, baby.
I was not carried here
or born of water.
If I am washed out
there is no holy coast
guard to throw me a sanctified life vest.
No, if I am swalloed up by the waves
I will sink straight and fast.
There’s not even two planks
from a shipwreck to cling to.
I know you’re there, baby
just beyond the horizon
walking the beaches of your own island.
Maybe the wind howls,
maybe the water’s cold.
Calm nights I hear you
singing, working,
the low rumble of the stones you roll
looking in every tidal cave
for an answer
or a sign.
I’ve looked for rescue everywhere, baby,
shook my fist at the slate sea
sent up flares and smoke signals
got only tides
and empty wind for answer.
Amy McGeorge
Johnny Cash Blue pg. 153
After the fall, she didn’t have any more tears to lend.
dried up to the bone
alone in her apartment
that faced the gas station manned by the tribe
of toothless women with bottle-blond hair,
she found it hard to listen to Johnny Cash.
It hurt like scratchy sheets,
to hear his voice waver
over her in the heated air.
An emptiness a thousand times
more troubling than the blues
and overdue library books
hit her in the dry heaves of leftover loves
every time Johnny sand
sweet and grizzled over June.
It felt like the moon wouldn’t show
and the night would never end,
even when the promise was whistling
somewhere outside of the parking lot
below her open bedroom window.
The sound of the needle
scratching against the vinyl
made dancing joyless
in the shuffle of madness
and the burden of losing –
the only man she ever knew
who was sure to have an honest hand
in an uncertain game of rhythmic blues,
filled with poker-faced, cardshark poets
out to stake their claim
and steal all her favorite tunes.
Essays on John G. Neihardt
Barbara Schmitz
Excerpt from Mysticism And Iambic Pentameter pg. 150-153
“The last time I saw Neihardt was at Dana College, and he was still reciting. In fact, he wouldn’t stop. he went on and on. Which was fine with me. His voice was still strong and oratorical, and he picked fine parts of his works to perform; but the program organizers had other ideas and, after about an hour, wanted him to quit. it was quite a battle to get him to sit down and shut up.”
“The day Neihardt died in early November, it snowed just a little. I always felt nature was marking the passage with a small memento. As I look into my copy of A Cycle of the West, I find Neihardt inscribed it to me with “kind thoughts.” I thank you, John, for those kind thoughts, for your attempts to teach me meter—I’m still not very good at it—but most of all, for the introduction to the path of mysticism with your great literature and tremendous spirit. May we all “lose our little dreams and waken together.””—Barbara Schmitz
William Kloefkorn
Excerpt fromHardwares pg. 201-206
“In his autobiography Mr. Neihardt writes, “The chief entrance requirements of the old Nebraska Normal College seemed to be the applicant’s conscious ignorance and his determination to do something about it.” Yes, indeed, if by “conscious ignorance” he means “a desire to know more, regardless of how much I know already.” The Neihardt seminar that summer was comprised of teachers who wanted to know more than they already knew (count the instructor among them), and they had applied for admission to a college that remains in the best sense of the work “normal,” which to me is synonymous with “grassroots” and “common sense.”” –William Kloefkorn
Sally McCluskey, PH.D.
Excerpts from Driving Doctor Neihardt pg. 6-10
“In July 1966, Neihardt was scheduled to teach a two-week seminar in poetry at Wayne. Then word came he’d been downed by double pneumonia—a serious ailment for a man of 85. Some feared he might not survive.
But Neihardt was tough. He recovered, although his illness had left him slightly breathless, and after exertion, he tended to gasp. yet he intended to fulfill his obligation, came to Wayne in July, took up residence in the guest room at Neihardt hall, and was ready to teach.
He was not, however, out of danger. The fates conspired to give him an assistant—me—the department’s lowliest instructor.”
“Maybe his memory was too full of names to remember mine, but I was charmed. It was like being spoken to by an elderly and courteous knight.
Still, we were six decades apart in age and eons apart in experience, and I worried that he might be bored by someone as callow as I. one Saturday afternoon I had a not-so-brilliant idea: I would take him for a drive.”
“I began to try roads I’d never before taken. “This’ll be great,” I assured Neihardt. “We’ll explore the unbeaten track—just like the Ashley-Henry men.”
But somehow I got on a path that was as about as unbeaten as they come. There was no more pavement, only one rutted lane, and trees had become a distant green blur in the rearview mirror.”
“Several fields away, I could see a lone farmhouse. it seemed our only hope for help, but it was clearly too far for Neihardt to walk, and we were separated from the house by a nasty-looking creek with steep muddy sides.
Still about a mile and a half away, some sort of ancient bridge or trestle crossed the creek. It would be a long detour, but I could use it to get to the house, and, I prayed, to help.”
I told Neihardt my plan and pleaded with him to find some shade.
“You be careful, Lady,” he said, and wished me well.
I ran the mile and a half, crossing the bridge, and nearly collapsed on the porch of the farmhouse. I almost wept with relief to find a couple at home.”
“I stumbled up to him. “Help is coming,” I croaked. I was soaked with sweat nd so was he, and we were both huffing mightily.
He gestured with a frown at the banks and the sludgy water. I was afraid you’d try to cross that thing. Would have been a big mistake.”
“I almost did,” I admitted. “It didn’t look safe.”
“It’s not. And it’s not a creek. It’s a drainage ditch. That’s sewage flowing in it.”
I realized that was the best thing that had happened to me all day. I hadn’t fallen into the sewage ditch.
Neihardt said, “I figured if you got stuck down there, I’d have to get you out. I thought I could hang onto a root, and you could climb up my leg.”
That strange and gallant image has hung with me many years. An 85-year-old poet working out a plan to save me by letting me crawl up his leg.
He’d made me smile. “I was okay. I was just worried about you.
He smiled, too, and put his hat back on at a jaunty angle. “And I was worried about you. That’s why we both came through, see? We didn’t worry about ourselves. That’s how it works, you know.” –Sally McCluskey |
