ABOUT

CONTENTS

EDITORIAL

ARCHIVE

LAGNIAPPE

MAST

SUBMISSIONS

I am Writing a Novel About the Old West

I am writing a novel about the Old West
About a man named Jack Daniels
And his trials with women and drink.
I have just started the part where a mob
Tries to kill Jack for killing the mother
of the sheriff who killed Jack's brother.

I love to write; that's why I'm writing
A novel about the Old West, about the
tomahawk skies above a town that wipes
Its mouth on its sleeve. Though no one

knows it, that's the Good Lord Jesus,
sleeping sombreroed outside the saloon.
He's got one Yankee dollar and a ticket
For the next train to Tombstone—only
That's the bit I just can't get right.



Sample No. 1

Climb up, get in. Be drawn
into the night. It happens that
the world has run out of patience.
From general death to the life
of the concrete. Score and torsion.
Who shall be spared?

I felt daylight flame beneath my skin this evening
as I passed the chapel of a god who will damn but never devour.



Sample No. 3

Go blue, stub
of December,

the year in a fast fade.
An immortal soul,

that's something
for me to wish for

until I flow again
like windswept hair

Eat the apple the way horses do...




Tea with Urko
(with apologies to Dennis Weaver)

I had my neighbor Urko
over for tea again today.
He kept going on
about how what the apes need
is power—raw, naked power.
I said "Hey, Urko,
what do you want in your tea
sugar or lemon?" Then he was saying
how the only good human
is a dead human—stuff like that.
I said "come on, Urko.
what do you want in your tea today?"
"Want milk in your tea?"
Then he got mad and left
when I said "How about
that doll in the cave?
It talked didn't it?"