October 2014 Issue- Week 2
October 14, 2014
“Better late than never!” our managing editor Ms. Stelling says. It’s been busy around the pub office since we began 1 year to the date publishing authors poetry and flash fiction books. And we look forward to more manuscript submission for next fall! We would love to see some western genre manuscripts come out way, since there are so many of you submitting to this ezine.
See our submission guidelines at www.reddashboard.com for more information, dates are Oct 1st – Feb 28th.
Enjoy this months issues!
Photo by Malinda Fillingim of David Fillingim singing at a chuck wagon event at the Booth Western Museum, Cartersville, GA.
COWBOY SHOWERS
She never liked the smell of cattle
Keeping me clean was always her battle
I sprayed myself twice a day
Just to keep the fighting at bay.
It never dawned on me
That my arm pits stank
But daily she reminded me
With many big yanks.
Get in the shower
She’d loudly declare
While I wash out
Your dirty underwear.
I wonder if her
Love is enough
To keep me clean
Not smelling of snuff
Maybe it is,
Maybe it’s not,
But this shower
Is way too hot.
She can’t cook
Her love’s gone sour,
So why am I here
Scrubbing in a shower?
I’ll grab my clothes
And all that’s pretty
And find a woman
Who’ll love me dirty!
Malinda and David Fillingim have been married for over 30 years and live in Leland, NC. They both teach at Cape Fear Community College, Wilmington, NC. David is an award winning writer of many books and articles, including Georgia Cowboy Poets and Malinda takes really good photos with a camera she bought at a thrift store for one dollar. Contact either one at fillingam@ec.rr.com.
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INDIAN CAMP OF THE HUDSON VALLEY – A True Story
There was no reservation,
only houses and shanties
in the wetlands along the Esopus Creek.
Not good land, it flooded
in the Springs when the run-off
to the river was high.
Dutch burghers and Tory descendants
disdained it, but
it was place to these displaced Algonquians,
Lenape from New Jersey, Manhattan and Delaware.
They took the twenty-fours dollars worth of trinkets
for land they did not own,
and they knew farming,
how to make fabric from plants and skins.
They had kitchen gardens
tended by women and children.
In time before driven out of the valley,
men worked the slate mines,
skidding great gray slabs on timbers
to Hudson’s stolen river.
Straining horses and men delivered
the sidewalks of New York
to barges dipping and bowing
in the residual tides of estuary.
Commerce walked like a ghost
on the water
of the Creek and of the River,
slipping away toward Manhattan
and the sea.
Howard Winn has published over 400 poems and short stories in various competitive selection literary magazines. He’s published one book of poetry, and has been nominated for a Push Cart Press Award three times. Winn has appeared in two poetry anthologies, one published in the Ashland Poetry Series and one of Hudson Valley poets edited by Mary Gordon. He’s been included in one anthology celebrating the 300th year anniversary of the discovery of the Hudson River.
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Blessings Be Upon You, Horace Greely
“Go West, young man, go West and grow up with the country.”
So, I followed the Conestogas
and found forever, an Eden,
endless vistas that promised
vast possibilities of success.
With no gaurantee in my pocket,
save that of manhood’s training,
I trusted myself,
and called myself frontiersman
when in truth I was a gambler separated
from those who sought safety in civilization.
And I, a being formed by space itself,
untamed, unrestrained
except by natural age and failing,
chart my course by stars named
Sea. Sage. Sequoia.
Mesa, rio, arroyo—
commissioned by God to dare.
Experiment.
Build.
Fashion.
A demigod in boots and chaps
wielding a branding iron instead of lightning bolts,
I did not know the Great Divide
was more than just geography,
that those contented
with being Europe’s mirror
would become my enemy
because they fear the freedom
of the ultimate question:
Now that God has made him,
what can a man make of himself?
Jenean McBrearty is a graduate of San Diego State University, a former community college instructor who taught Political Science and Sociology, and is finishing a certificate in Veteran Studies. Her fiction has been published in a slew of print and on-line journals including Cigale Literary Magazine, 100 Doors to Madness Anthology, Mad Swirl and The Moon; her poetry has been accepted by Van Gogh’s Ear and Page & Spine; and her photographs have appeared in Foliate Oak Literary Journal and Off the Coast Magazine among others. Her novel, The 9th Circle was published by Barbarian Books, serials Raphael Redcloak and Retrolands can be found on Jukepop.com. Web-page: Jenean-McBrearty.com.
October is also dedicated to Robert Penven, one of our beloved poets passed last night after a surgery that wasn’t suppose to cause problems. He was 81, and was one of our biggest supporters, lived here in New Jersey, about an hour away from the managing editor who met him at a local Vineland poetry group, Poetry-go-round once a month. RIP dear cowboy, you are missed…
October 2014 Issue- Week 1
October 4, 2014
“Better late than never!” our managing editor Ms. Stelling says. It’s been busy around the pub office since we began 1 year to the date publishing authors poetry and flash fiction books. And we look forward to more manuscript submission for next fall! We would love to see some western genre manuscripts come out way, since there are so many of you submitting to this ezine.
See our submission guidelines at www.reddashboard.com for more information, dates are Oct 1st – Feb 28th.
Enjoy this months issues!
(Click to enlarge)
Watercolor ‘Steeds’ by Anj Marth
Ocean steeds was inspired by a story my great-grandmother told me when I first started riding horseback. Selkies are beautiful horses that live in the sea, and come to shore to tempt people to try to catch them. If you bridle one, or get on its back (it will let you) it will drag you into the deeps with it, and there’s no escape.
Anj Marth was born in the early 70s, and grew up on the east coast of the US, near Philadelphia. She has since moved and traveled all over the country, by road. She currently lives in the Pacific Northwest and
considers it home. She works in a variety of mediums and has been a professional,licensed tattoo artist since the late 90s.
Her condensed portfolio can be seen here- Anj Marth Portfolio
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KODACHROME BOOTS
This here’s a tale bout widow Beall and me,
a very close call as far as I can see.
Nearly hung myself from a stout oak tree,
when she proclaimed she’s “a gonna marry thee”!
Now, widow Beall was a comely lass,
much appeal and a cute little…….well.
Dumb as a sheep and not much class,
spit fire temper and a whole lot of sass.
Not fix’n to marry, ner give’n a dang hoot,
rather ride me a bronc, raise hell and shoot.
Single I’ll stay, til I be a grizzled old coot,
and all this started o’er a Kodachrome boot.
A life riding single with a little spare loot,
I’d spent honest big money on Kodachrome boots.
With huge eagle wings, patterns fanciful stitched,
never reckoned on them boots a get’n me hitched.
Them knee high boots just glowed by day,
bright yellar and red with horned lizard inlay.
Strong ride’n heels built up real high,
with side seam piping, blue as the sky.
Chartreuse pull straps above scalloped top,
a rainbow of colors that seemed never to stop.
Big ole eagles, blueish green and dark taupe,
tawdry beauty from some boot makers shop.
Kodachrome boots made from the best of cowhide,
brash as a peacock cowboy on an afternoon ride.
Clean shirt, fresh hat, pants stuffed inside,
One of a kind boots, whispered ego and pride.
When corralled by the widow, I couldn’t break free,
She’d always look down and then I could see,
her eyes come alive, twinkling romance and glee,
It was them boots she truly loved and not really me!
I hatched an idea to get me outta her plan,
and git back on the trail as fast as I can.
Just need to convince my first cousin Stan,
widow Beall needs some lov’n and he is her man.
Got Stan a new Stetson, wild rag and new suit,
a bath, and some tonic, why he looked darn right cute.
And to sweet’n the deal, first time in the chute,
I gave him my pair of those kodachrome boots.
Marc Bradshaw– Though raised in the hills and hollows of central Kentucky, the southwest U.S. beckoned immediately after high school graduation. Over the next 50 years California’s San Joaquin valley and parts south of Bakersfield, in Santa Fe New Mexico, and currently Mesquite Nevada were home to life and
work.
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COME HAVEN OR LOW WATER
when we hear the recorded whoop of
a cowboy cello we’re not truant
only away from our home butte
on the Niobrara
we are the men of earth we have been
and when we reinvent the odor
of horse and hay we ride and forget
what larrupt us to town
there won’t ever be a flareout of
the world or a man-roping event
in the oil range we hold the dream to
on the Niobrara
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COWBOY OF THE SEA
His name is Keealani,
a cowboy of the sea.
Needs the wind upon his back,
that bucking ride to set him free.
He wrestles surf and ocean
gripping tight and holding strong,
waiting for horns blowing
counting seconds short and long.
Got his lasso round his ankle
his bolo tie, a string of shells,
biggest difference in this cowboy
is his fishy stinky smell.
No manure or dirt upon him,
just the residue of sand,
cause this cowboy’s ride is over
when he steps upon the land.
Heather M. Browne is a faith-based psychotherapist and recently emerged poet, published in the Orange Room, Boston Literary Review, Page & Spine, Eunoia Review, Poetry Quarterly, The Poetry Bus, Red Fez, The Muse, An International Journal of Poetry, Deep Water Literary Journal, Electric Windmill, Maelstrom, mad swirl, and Dual Coast. Her first chapbook, We Look for Magic and Feed the Hungry has been published by MCI. She just won the Nantucket Poetry Competition, a semi-finalist in Casey Shay chapbook competition, and has her first collection coming out this winter with Red Dashboard Publishing. Recently widowed from her love of 21 years, she lives with her 2 amazing teens, and can be found frolicking in the waves. Follow her: www.thehealedheart.net
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December 2013- Week 2
December 10, 2013
Michael Hudson is a poet/preacher in Arizona, and is our resident ranch hand and roper sends us these great photos from time to time! He is the rider, but not sure who is down on the ground, but they do this from sun-up to sun-down, every day.
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MY CHARISMATIC COWBOY
Observe brash
imminent intimidation
every part of.
Like pauses in the flow,
we listen.
Inclusionists
crouched over this.
Our knowledge acts withered
slow to resist.
Faint lips
subjective in the telling.
Now willing to present
the kiss.
Thank you for traveling through time.
Passive histrionics
levitating beneath a rock.
Servitude’s meandering cracks,
where did I put that’s.
Forever and ever or
a horizon of stoics.
Impractically industrious.
I witnessed a fellow spirit
materialize without a comma
within the here is.
Colin James has a chapbook of poems available from Atlantean Publishing, and has been published via other journals and on-line lit magazines.
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Stage Coaches
Cowboy songs command the throng.
One falls off his hobbyhorse.
Some miss marks.
The sheriff stage-whispers cues
from a casting couch,
Hands up. Drop your drawers.
Unstellar heroine in the dark
— cut to black,
nothing but crickets.
Gerard Sarnat is the author of two critically acclaimed poetry collections, 2010’s “HOMELESS CHRONICLES from Abraham to Burning Man” and 2012’s “Disputes.” His pieces have appeared or are forthcoming in over seventy journals and anthologies. Harvard and Stanford educated, Gerry’s been a physician who’s set up and staffed clinics for the disenfranchised, a CEO of health care organizations, and a Stanford professor. For “The Huffington Post” review of his work and more; visit GerardSarnat.com.
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Horse, pony, colt, filly waiting for a cowboy
Horse on the trail
waiting for a cow
waiting for a cowboy
traveling a trail
pony at a fair
waiting on a kid
waiting for a rider
traveling a circuit
colt born wild
colt waiting to run wild
colt waiting for a mustang wild run
colt traveling a wildness trail
filly born wild
filly in the wildness running wild
filly waiting for a drink of water
filly running in a wildness trail
cowboy tell me this
cowboy tell me that
cowboy tell me a horse tale
cowboy waiting on a cow trail
Working with a cow
working for along time on the cow trail
fencing the wild trail
gone wild are the horses
gone are the ponies
gone are the colts
gone wild are the fillies
how sad are the cowboys with fences
Clinton Seagle as a kid grew up on Cracker Box Route Fallon, Montana area. Worked a bit in Ekalaka Montana where one can see the end of the world is just a step away. Returned Peace Corps Volunteer from Bolivia an other end of the world stepping stone. This is his first attempt at publishing his work.
October Issue- Week 4
October 22, 2013
‘Chuck Wagon Eats’– “In my many journeys as a chef: Boy Scouts, trail drives, camp outs etc., I’ve made Hatch Chili Stew, and most recently for a crowd of twenty in the Pine Barrens while hunting down the Jersey Devil.” Managing Editor CPP, Elizabeth Akin Stelling
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JAYHAWKED
Send Kansas to me in a sun shower.
You said you’d come home with a rainbow.
Don’t want fraidy hole siren hook echoes—
or thunder god flashes of ego. I want scissor-
tails clipped to a windshear, to clear me a path
through your switchgrass. No rope-jumping
Jayhawk squawk-tongues in a squall, or campfire
myths hawking ghost rain. I’m that torn-stalk
sunflower you stuck like a pig in a hog wallow
next to a cornfield. I want flag-side-up roses
round a two-story soddie near an artesian spring
in the tallgrass, with a fresh holstein heifer rich
on alfalfa hay staked-out next to a new butter
churn. Or I’ll muster a posse to lasso your ass
to the dilated tail of a wall cloud, and hog-tie
your spurs to a rodeo bull—spinning pirouettes
through a herd of wild mustangs.
Kevin Heaton is originally from Kansas and Oklahoma. He now lives and writes in South Carolina. His work has appeared in a number of publications including: Raleigh Review, Foundling Review, Beecher’s Magazine, The Monarch Review, and Mixed Fruit. His fourth chapbook of poetry, ‘Chronicles,’ was published by Finishing Line Press in 2012 . He is a Pushcart, Best of the Net, and Best New Poets 2013 nominee.
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MEETING UP AT EARL’S
The goldstone glitter of Gallup doesn’t
Begin here, but native vendors
Shine walking through Earl’s Café,
Route 66, offering art with pride:
Sleeping Beauty Turquoise and Kingman,
Zuni Petit-Point, Red Coral, Spiny Oyster Shell,
Lapis, Horse-Hair Pottery, Heishi Beads.
“Silver’s shot,” the Navajo artist says,
“Can’t touch the price so we work
With copper, sell it cheap.”
Spirit-lined woven rugs: as the weaver finishes
The rug, she leaves a white wool thread in the corner
Welcoming dreams of the next rug’s design.
Sumac baskets fetch gas money to travel home.
Animal fetishes and mud pots grace tabletops.
Red and green chili, corn tortillas in
Buffalo pottery and blue water plates.
Warm bread pudding for dessert. Greenthread tea.
We amble outside – vendors sitting at card tables,
Laughing, selling Concho Belts, Dream Catchers,
Cell Phone Charms. “So, where are ya from?”
Elaine Dugas Shea has lived in Montana for several decades, but still misses the ocean. She enjoyed a career in social justice working with American Indian Tribes and civil rights. Her writing is featured in Third Wednesday*, South Dakota Review, *the anthology *The Light in Ordinary Things, *the anthology *Hope Whispers, *Front Range Review, CAMAS, Spillway*, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, the anthology When Last on the
Mountain: The View from Writers over Fifty, Montana Voices Anthology and elsewhere.
October Issue- Week 3
October 14, 2013
Monsoon rains of San Pedro Valley, “The territory comes alive after the rains, everything turns as green as you can see.”– M. C. (Mike) Hudson was born in Tombstone, Arizona and has lived and loved the life of a cowboy for most of his life. He is an ex-bull rider, who has lived to tell about his experiences, and has helped train youth to ride bulls. As a pastor of a rural church and setting in SE. AZ Mike has worked many of the larger ranches in Arizona and New Mexico, gathering cows, doctoring, sorting, branding (cutting-seems to be the job for a pastor) and roping. He is also embarking on a journey into writing poetry and prose, and was chosen for the October 2012- week 3. You can spot his photos all about CPP if you just explore…
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THE COUNTRY MILE
Mixed with tobacco juice
And red summer clay
It came from the edge
Of the cornfield
The clout that soared
Past the unplowed field
Smashed into the red barn
Scattering the cawing crows.
Clinton Van Inman (TBA)
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APACHE
“When I was young, I walked all over this country;
east and west. I saw no other people than the Apache.
After many summers, I walked again, and found another
race of people had come to take it—how is it?” -Cochise
We wished only to speak sunlight into our hearts.
To follow mountain spirits toward ‘The Giver of Life.’
To own nothing, and everything—bow to no man.
Now, our mesquite and cactus are barren. We carry
life on our fingernails and wait to die.
Kevin Heaton is originally from Kansas and Oklahoma. He now lives and writes in South Carolina. His work has appeared in a number of publications including: Raleigh Review, Foundling Review, Beecher’s Magazine, The Monarch Review, and Mixed Fruit. His fourth chapbook of poetry, ‘Chronicles,’ was published by Finishing Line Press in 2012 . He is a Pushcart, Best of the Net, and Best New Poets 2013 nominee.
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The Alien Invasion Tapes, #87
It was back in ’63 they set down in my wheat field, and I was too damn angry to be scared. I knew that crop was gone and it wasn’t a thing anyone could do about it. When they come out of their spaceship—no, no it wasn’t a door that swung down like on a castle,
but a giant car door, like on my Buick?—they come out, three of ‘em no taller than my knee,
and just stared at me, no expression in those big glassy eyes, no sorrow for what they done to my field.
“We come in peace,” they said without sayin’ it out loud but I heard it in my head, and I looked at my flattened, withered wheat and said, “The hell you do.”
Have you ever seen mangled wheat, the stalks cracked, the feathers singed? A whole season: It’s enough to make you cry. And I did, standin’ in the middle of my broken field with those three aliens, wellin’ up, the door to their giant ship propped open, a sickening light pourin’ from inside and slicin’ across my barren field like a knife. They do somethin’ like rock, paper, scissors and one come over and tells me I’m supposed to be some kind of alien ambassador. 100 acres, gone, the exhaust from their craft fellin’ my crop like a tornado, the shoots fallin’ like dominoes, like ambushed soldiers, the stink pourin’ into my nostrils.
“You fellas best be on your way,” I said as patiently as any man who just lost his livelihood can, and for the first time they look around. Sure I think they’re doin’ damage assessment, conjurin’ a way to bring the wheat back, and I picture those fuzzy stalks risin’ like an army of mini Lazaruses across the dead plain, work hard to send that image to them with my mind. But they’re fixed on somethin’ else now, and it’s Tessie, comin’ toward us, haunch-slow, jaws workin’, wheat cracklin’ beneath her bovine hooves. I point to her, my prize heifer, shake my head and give them a firm “NO!” But Tessie and the aliens, they’re starin’ at one another, stock still, as if hypnotized. And even today I wonder what they said that made her walk right past me, through the blade of sharp light and into that shiny crop killin’ machine: You’ll be happier with us, He don’t appreciate you, YOU are the true alien ambassador. So that’s how I lost my wheat and my cow in the same hour.
The man from the insurance company, he don’t believe me, but I know you do. You see this stuff all the time, so I was hopin’ you could talk to ‘im, tell ‘im about the giant car door, the two-foot Martians, a prized cow that trundled, hooves clickin’, into another dimension.
Dorene O’Brien has appeared in the Connecticut Review, Carve Magazine, Connecticut Review, New Millennium Writings, The Cimarron Review, the Chicago Tribune, Detroit Noir and others. She has won the Red Rock Review’s Mark Twain Award for Short Fiction, the New Millennium Fiction Award, and the Chicago Tribune Nelson Algren Award. Her stories have been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes, and she has won the international Bridport Prize and has received a creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Dorene’s short story collection, Voices of the Lost and Found, won the USA Best Books Award.
October Issue- Week 1
October 1, 2013
Tombstone- ‘Town Too Tough To Die’
Managing Editor, Elizabeth Akin Stelling visited Tombstone in 2010, and survived the heat, or was it the OK Corral reenactment…
Tombstone was founded in 1877 by a prospector named Ed Schieffelin. Ed was staying at what was then called Camp Huachuca (wa-chu-ka) as part of a scouting expedition against the Chiricahua (chir-i-cow-uh) Apaches. During his time there he would venture out into the wilderness “looking for rocks”, all the while ignoring the warnings he received from the soldiers at the camp. They would tell him, “Ed, the only stone you will find out there will be your tombstone”. Well, Ed did find his stone. And it was Silver. So, remembering the words of warning from the soldiers, he named his first mine The Tombstone.
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WHITMAN REVISITED
When I heard the learned astronomer
From proofs and charts and periodic tables
H&R diagrams, overheads, and visuals,
With power points to show the history of stars
From flowers to quarks to quasars,
To the theory of everything
As all greatest mysteries unfolded
From hydrogen to hogs, to Hectors,
And among all the applause, I felt sick
And arose and went outside for some fresh air
Where looking up I beheld the silence of the stars
Until I realized I was in the planetarium.
Clinton Van Inman Born in England, BA 1975 San Diego State University, high school teacher in Tampa, lives in Sun City Center, Fl with his wife Elba. One of the last Beats still standing and still banging the drum (slower now) for the Cause.
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I Wasn’t Born a Cowboy
I wasn’t born a cowboy, but I’ve done my level best
to earn the right to be called one today
I’ve shoveled up the stalls, unloaded tons of feed and hay
I’ve even milked some cows along the way
My childhood home was not a ranch, though on the country side
we had a few ol’ chickens and of course
I rode my bike for several miles each day come rain or shine
so I could care for my beloved horse
I didn’t have a thousand acres, or a herd of cows
but I could rope and tie a “Bramer” calf
And I could nail the shoes on dang near any horse around
been throwed and every time I climbed right back
No, cowboys may not all be born, cause some of us are made
like poor folks who grow up and make their way
To fame and fortune, that’s how cowboys do it, difference is
we don’t get rich like them, just draw our pay
I’m proud to call myself a cowboy and I know for sure
that others who have earned the right will say
That nothin’ good comes easy, but you hang on for the ride
get bucked off, get back on, the cowboy way…
Smokey Culver was born and raised in southeast Texas, and has lived there all his life. He writes music and poetry about whatever comes to mind, mostly farmers and ranchers and down home folks. The Lord has blessed him with an ability to put thoughts into words that generally make sense, and even stir up emotions sometimes. I have recently joined the board of directors of Musicians, Artists , Authors, Poets, and Storytellers (MAAPS) of Texas as the person to oversee the cowboy poetry issues. My poetry link- Smokey Culver via FB
February 2013- Week 4
February 25, 2013
The Shooting Star
Midnight splendor
Tell me cowboy,
what was your wish?
Stars shoot first
and ask questions later.
Virginie Colline is a French translator living in Paris. You can read her latest poems in
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*/Paniolo/*
by Clark Crouch
He’s a paniolo
on a volcanic range
minding herds of cattle,
it’s really not so strange.
He’s a paniolo
on these, the lava lands.
He’s a paniolo
far from the beach’s sands.
His ranch is quite ancient
from ‘fore the Texasrange;
from eighteen nine ’til now
there’s been so little change.
His ranch is very large…
puts other spreads to shame;
multi-thousand acres
brings paniolo fame.
His ranch is furtherest west,
and off the continent,
three-thousand miles away
on an isle of content.
There on the mount’nous slopes,
his herds of cattle roam.
He’s a paniolo;
Hawaiiis his home.
Aloha paniolo
on the lava lands.
Aloha, paniolo
February 2013- Week 3
February 18, 2013
“illo: cowboy-coat=scratch.
It’s well known that an artist becomes more popular by dying, so I’m typing this with one hand while pummeling my head with a frozen mackerel with the other. I’ve done art for several magazines, newspapers, websites, commercial and governmental clients, books, and scribbling – but mostly drooling – on tavern napkins. I also create art pro bono for several animal rescue groups. I was awarded the 2004 James Award for my cover art for Champagne Shivers. I recently illustrated the Cimarron Review, Stories for Children, and Still Crazy magazine covers. Take a gander ( or a goose ) at my online gallery: _www.angelfire.com/sc2/cartoonsbycartwright_ (http://www.angelfire.com/sc2/cartoonsbycartwright) . And please hurry with your response – this mackerel’s killin’ me! Your pal, Steve Cartwright”
Heartache and Pards
His words were plain and to the point,
“Sometimes this life just sucks.
She does her best to throw ya down,
She boogers and she bucks.”
The cowboy knew the trail I rode,
The steep and rocky way.
I came for lies and platitudes,
But truth was all he’d say.
“You’re gonna hurt a good long time,
Ain’t nothin’ can be done.
You’ll ride awhile in blackest night,
Before ya see the sun.
The pain you feel ain’t nothin’ new,
Just look around, and know,
That scores of riders up ahead,
Have passed the way you’ll go.”
His thoughts were far from comforting,
Not what I came to hear.
His kindness smoothed their edges though,
And helped to calm my fear.
“There’s some will buckle to the test,
Some barely make it through.
But you, you’re tough. You’ll be just fine.
I’ve seen what you can do.
Remember that I’ll be right here,
When livin’ feels too hard.
If you should ever need a friend,
Just holler for yer pard.”
Debra G. Meyer’s was born in Brooklyn, New York, where she spent the first 10 years of her life. Her family then moved to Crane,Indiana. Debra married in 1974 at the age of eighteen, finished her education at Indiana State University in 1977, and by the age of 30 had two children and a job teaching elementary school. She wrote my first cowboy poem in 2007 after visiting a cowboy gathering in Fort Worth, Texas. Now 57 years old, have a small farm in Putnam County, Indiana, still teach school, and absolutely love writing cowboy poetry.
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GUN FIGHT AT THE DIAMOND K CORRAL
It was one of those days at the ranch when you sensed something was going to happen—something fun but probably slightly dangerous. Grandpa, Uncle George and I were gathered on the back porch of the Bachelor Shack. On the agenda was a shooting match with the usual hyperbole regarding one’s expertise. Grandpa raised the ante to a bottle of Uncle George’s Courvoisier to the winner or, in the unlikely event that he lost, the same prize which he would obtain at the bar of the Rogers Hotel in Idaho Falls. Grandpa was generous and offered Uncle George a small victory sip. My uncle was “powerful annoyed” because first his cognac was dearer than life and second there was a strong possibility that his Dad would out shoot him. Furthermore his Dad knew exactly how to gore his ox. The shooting was over before it started. It wasn’t even close as the “hawkeye” punctured ten out of ten tin cans at 75 yards.
Uncle George was very unhappy and Grandpa was doing his best to restrain his gloating about his smashing victory. We retired to the front room of the Shack. I found an old seat out of the way and at a respectful distance from the combatants. Uncle George and Grandpa sat on the cots facing each other. They downed the bottle of cognac and then the conversation and its volume escalated. The egregious acts which followed became the stuff of legends.
Taking casual aim Grandpa shot a hole near the bottom of one of Uncle George’s gallon cans of honey and the resultant flow was spectacular and catastrophic. Then without a pause he shot a bottle of Hennessy where it had rested a long time under its owner’s savoring glance. Uncle George was furious—he had lost two bottles of cognac and a can of honey.
Before outrage set in, Grandpa was heading down the road with remarkable speed toward the ranch house. According to a reliable source, he ran upstairs and hid in the closet.
Within seconds Uncle George burst through the door shouting,
“Where is he? I’m going to kill him.”
In her customary calm voice Grandma said. “Put down the gun, Junior. You know he didn’t mean anything.”
Uncle George was still indignant, “Didn’t mean anything!” He detailed the damages and his grievances.
Grandma raised her hand and declared, “There will be restitution. Now put down the gun!!”
Uncle George did and the crisis was averted. In a few days Grandpa was seen heading toward the Bachelor Shack with a gallon can of honey and two bottles of Courvoisier—-a special affirmation of the wondrous love between father and son.
Later Grandma asked me to recite the events of the great shoot out. She listened and pronounced, “Those damn fools. They could have killed my grandson.”
I replied, “Maybe not Grandma, I was ready to duck.”
Michael J. Keyser in his formative years spent summers and other free time at the family ranch, the Diamond k located in southeastern Idaho. He graduated from Princeton University with a B.A. in English. While there, he won the John B. Wanamaker Prize for Excellence in English Composition.
Mr. Keyser served as the President of the American Cancer Society, Cuyahoga County Unit. He was also a Park Commissioner in Hudson, Ohio. For several years he served on the Board of the Summit-Portage County Health Systems Agency.
He also has published four works of fiction. His hobbies are writing, walking and woodworking. Mr. Keyser is very active in his church with outreach ministries serving senior health facilities.
February 2013- Week 2
February 12, 2013
The Lonesome Cowboy
The lonesome cowboy, he’s out on a roam.
With thirty miles of fence to mend, and today’s grown old.
He finds an old cotton tree, says: “Guess here tonight I’ll be…”
He throws down his saddle and poke,
pulls out some hard tack, coffee and a smoke,
and the frayed-edged letter from Maria, the only one who wrote.
The lonesome cowboy, he’ll pass the night away,
The Hotel of a Million Stars, that’s where he likes to stay.
He don’t got no house, don’t pay no rent.
Out on the range, he’s so content.
A new moon’s on the rise, he’s searching the starry sky,
Thinking about Maria, and her boy, who’s got his eyes.
The lonesome cowboy he’s tired, he calls it a day.
Lays down his head to rest, he dreams the night away,
of Colorado, and pasture sweet, tall green grass, wading through waste deep.
On his cow horse with his cow dog, the cowboy drives ’em on,
up to Colorado from New Mexico, he’s dreaming on and on and on.
The lonesome cowboy, he’ll pass his life away.
He’ll be riding herd, and mending fence, he’ll even put up some hay.
He don’t like concrete, it kind of hurts his feet.
His cowboy boots don’t wear even on a street.
There’s just one thing that he wants. That’s to find the love he lost.
He’s whispering to the wind, and he sends her his kind thoughts.
Yea, he’s whisperin’ to the wind, and he sends her his kind thoughts.
Yea, he’s whisperin’ to the wind, and he sends her his kind thoughts.
Going to Maria, Maria…
Espero te, siempre, mi amor, mi amor perdido, Maria…
(I’ll wait for you, forever, my love, my lost love, Maria)
Arthur Davenport’s musical career spans 30 years of songwriting and
performance. He first started playing in the Washington D.C. folk
scene in the 1980’s and then moved on to the southwest scene during
the 90’s while living in New Mexico.
Arthur has been featured on National Public Radio performing his song,
“Lonesome Cowboy,” specially written for a cowboy music compilation
album entitled “‘Round-em Up!” Arthur now lives in Hawai’i where he
has been a house musician at the Hilo Palace Theater for the past ten
years.
************
A LACY VICTORIAN VALENTINE
Sweet Elizabeth
Can you feel the ride and rise of the sun
This mid-February day bucking against
The rusted spur and crumbling saddle of Jack Frost?
We done got the heifers all calved
Mostly in the ice of January nights
I reached into more than one cow
Afraid with the strange pain spewing new life onto the prairie
Turning her calf to touch light.
The coyotes so full of after birth
Gave the wobbly newborns a free pass
To rise and walk with their mothers.
The sun is frisking more each day
And a tired cowboy can hope for a short ride its in warm rays
To ask you to wander with him a while behind the old barn
To that spot I know where the first buttercups each year
Slip up between the patches of melting snow
I put on my new jeans and a clean shirt and my Sunday go to meeting Stetson
Cleaned the mud off my boots and even shined them.
It shore would be nice if you could walk with me
In the mothering breeze near
That weather beaten barn
With its sides testifying for Mail Pouch tobacco
“Treat yourself to the best”
In fading red and yellow painted by a dead hand some half century ago
Persisting like my feelings for you as the years say adios
To yesterday’s yearlings.
I wanted to share this lacy Victorian valentine
My great granddaddy gave my great grandmamma
Here on the ranch,
He warn’t no better with words than I am
But the pink lace and the frills and the buttercups
Would talk his feelings for her a whole lot better than his wind chapped lips
And tongue rusted from the silence of riding alone.
Tyson West is a is a traditional western poet whose aesthetic continually shape shifts. He watches the Northwest with veiled and hooded lynx eyes, broods among the conifers and quarrels with Coyote. He has a degree in history, but writes a variety of poetry styles, and has written a series of poems around Spokane Garry who is our local magical Indian. One of Tyson’s Western poems was published in Spoke Magazine called “Floorshow”, which is based on a picture of a 1922 floorshow in the Davenport Hotel which photo you can find on line. He lives in the middle of Eastern Washington, which is definitely cowboy country. There are two Washingtons, Eastern and Western, and they are as different as a Mocah Mint Latte with organic goats milk and black boiled coffee at a chuck wagon fire.
February 2013- Week 1
February 5, 2013
Ballad Of Rufus Hartz
First time I ever seen her was in the Rodeo parade
Jesse Sue ridin tall by her pa there in the cavalcade
Me I had a right good view, as the clown with the broom and pan
Sweepin’ up them hot horse apples and puttin’ em in the can.
See Billy didn’t have no sons, his wife a long time ago
Had run off one night with a deputy come up from Del Rio.
Since then him and Jesse Sue they run their ranch alone
Hunnert and forty acres of hardpan, flint and stone.
Their ranch raised Buckin’ Broncos for to sell to rodeos.
Mighty tough work, I reckon just ‘bout everyone knows.
Wranglin’ broncs is cowboy tough and it’s easy to git hurt
But Jesse Sue and her daddy never minded dirt nor work.
Now the Rodeo market ever’one knows is pert’ much a bumpy ride
Billy figured just to be safe, he need sumthin’ on the side.
Now hogs is sure fast money, and raisin’ ‘em aint much fun.
But Big Black pigs will market just under a quarter ton.
Big Blacks, was a new kind of breed
Round here they’d never been seen
On accounta them hogs, while they grow mighty big
They tend to git powerful mean.
But the brood sow never quit turnin’ out choats
A reg’lar piggie machine
So when the Rodeo market was cold or flat,
Them pigs paid the bills in between.
They’re fierce them Big Black hogs,
They’ll fuss and fight at the trough
Snarlin’ and bitin’, pushin’ and shovin’
By God don’t them hogs play rough.
So Billy rigged him a feed chute
Then he’d never have to go in.
He’d feed them murderous Big Blacks
Him standin’ outside the pig pen.
Other day I seen her sittin’ tall on her Appaloosa mare
Her hand above her eyebrows blockin’ out the glare
Over by the water tank I was hidin’, layin’ low down in the draw
Of course I weren’t s’posed to be there, on accounta Jesse’s pa.
He’d ordered me off’n their place and he threatened to call the law
He’d seen me a’ peekin through the winder of an evenin’ late last fall.
The man don’t understand there aint no harm in a’ lookin’
Watchin’ through the winder pane at a pretty girl jist cookin’.
Yesterday I seen her it was at Old Gumps Feed and Seed
Helpin’ her daddy Billy, they was stackin’ sacks o’ feed
Slingin’ bags of horse feed from the tailgate to the cab
Pigtails shinin’ golden in a shirt of pretty plaid.
Now Billy’s eye’s don’t see so good, and his hearin’s a total wreck
So creepin’ round the ranch house is much easier than you’d suspect
So tonight I’m gonna slip to her winder, jist to take me a little peek,
And watch the pretty fourteen year old get ready to go to sleep.
Late that night Jesse Sue awakened, them pigs was a raisin all hell
Somthin’ in their food shoot she could hear it clear as a bell
Why was daddy feedin those bruisers there in the dark of the night?
Then the pigs got all quiet, she rolled over and put out the light.
The deputy and the coroner lifted what was left to the ambulance
“Crazy as a bedbug, old Rufus he never had any sense.
And whatcha reckon he was doin’ in Jesse Sue’s pig sty at night
With them hogs was known to be vicious and ever so quick to fight?”
“There ain’t no accountin’ with a bad sort, one like that old Rufus Hartz
Ain’t it awful what them hogs has done, ‘specially to his lower parts.”
Death by accident was the verdict that day at the coroner’s inquest.
In a plain pine box the sheriff and her daddy laid Rufus Hartz to rest.
Gary Ives is a retired Senior Chief Petty Officer who lives with his wife and two
big dogs in the Ozarks where he grows apples and writes.
You can find more of his work and other ramblings here- Gary Ives
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