OKLAHOMA / Original Poetry

Dust Bowl Photograph by DOROTHEA LANGE

I haven’t posted one of my poems for quite some time, the fact is most poetry journals consider blog posts as publication and are not eager to accept them for submission. So, since I am interested in publishing, I have been holding back, saving my poems to submit to print journals.

Here however is one of my new poems I will share. It’s a poem that recently placed 2nd in the IBPC Poetry Competition. If you wish to read it on the IBPC website CLICK HERE

OKLAHOMA

Near old photographs of oil fields
and dust bowl refugees
a Rock-Ola jukebox
plays Earnest Tubb.

I’m drinking shots, ready
to stop driving trucks, to start
selling cars for my brother
in East Sacramento.

The bartender pours another
and knows she is striking,
a Cherokee maiden
with masculine shoulders,
heavy eye liner
and black press on nails.

We talk about Huntington’s disease
and Guthrie’s divorce,
ribbons of highways
and Dorothea Lange.

A wagon wheel light
is a circle of fire
on the ceiling.

I confess to sorting things out,
that my wife has filed papers.

Moon Mullican is singing
‘Goodnight Irene’
a cowboy in red leather boots,
stitched on the side
with white Texas stars,
slow dances his partner
into a corner.

Image Credit history.com