APJ Autumn 2007
AUTUMN 2007 "There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money, either." ~Robert Graves About the Poets Page 7 Credits Page 9 Big Thicket Song #3 Big Thicket Song #1 For Jame Byrd, Jr. Seven miles from the highway, down trails truckling through cypress trees— Blacktop yellow stripe down the middle the sun a hint of fire edging the leaves— they dragged a living man down a family of beavers builds a home. Never down until they dragged a dead man broken into pieces enough to participate from the bank of tooth- and tail-crafted pond, I shed on either side, tall pines, planted shirt and pants, strip to bare truth every ten years pulped after growth and wade into brown water, mists tall enough to mill the paper to publish the obituary still rising in the stippled day. Toes squish through ripe mud, bubbles ooze up. these woods have a dead man in them Sink down, descend days and years, broken shredded into black asphalt into first light. Sunlight, banding in waves, head legs torso scattered like needles deep woods whisper here breaks into thin beams between leaves and falling, falling, splatters knees a thousand people drive over red specks and belly, chest, penis, pale buttocks, spread droplets of raging tears but paints the years. Only the sounds a dead man’s dying cannot roll dark thicket into shining light of splashing, rap of a woodpecker on dry bark, rustle of armadillos rooting through damp leaves, breath heavy, alien. So and, again, so. A white heron, immense in beauty, © 2007 H.
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