Showing posts with label Sooner or Later Everyone Gets Theirs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sooner or Later Everyone Gets Theirs. Show all posts

Saturday, August 10, 2013

Little Dark-eyed Junco




photo © 2013 Jennifer Wagner



Welcome to Rubbletown,
and thanks for leaving.
Don’t let the saloon doors
hit ya on the backside on yer way out.

Rope yerself a farmer’s daughter
elsewhere—
cuz the sheriff here does all the ropin’
of the choicest stock.

He gets a cut down at
The Delmonico,
making fodder for Madame Maynard’s
…err, establishment.

That sheriff, he’s a mean cuss.
See them boots?
Silver-tipped and intricate all up the sides?
He dips ‘em in rattlesnake venom.
And he’ll kick ya ‘til yer skin splits
and rots, black as raven’s feathers.

He’s the devil alright.
And the devil deals in hearts.
That’s why I’ve sleeved
a spade.

One day he’s gonna ask
the wrong "purty lil' thang"
to dance.


© 2013 Jennifer Wagner



At dVerse we’re writing cowboy poetry.  The Delmonico was a Hotel and Restaurant and suspicioned to have rooms leased to Madame Henrietta Maynard in Port Townsend, WA in the early 1900’s.  I’ve based my fictionalized poem on accounts found in the “Bars & Bordellos” booklet from the Jefferson County Historical Society (pictured). 


Thursday, June 27, 2013

Full Circle from the High Road



You asked me how I felt,
after the year gone shipwreck
in the land of the malignant albatross,
and I could never answer you completely—
my chest too constricted, my voice,
mutilated and rasping in the wind.

You asked me how I felt,
and I have found words now,
though I have only wings for yesterday
fitted to fly in a sky I no longer believe in.

You asked me how I felt,
but I will hold my tongue
and watch patiently from my perch
the crow you will have to eat
nesting among wolfsbane and water hemlock,
while I am gaining strength to dip my feathers
and soar above the vultured horizon.

You asked me how I felt
and soon you’ll know
how it feels.



© 2013 Jennifer Wagner

For dVerse where Victoria has us writing anaphora poetry.

*wolfsbane and water hemlock are highly toxic plants.