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 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 2
October 7, 2013
Author Unknown- Photograph from the mid-1870s of a pile of American bison (high plains) skulls waiting to be ground for fertilizer. Courtesy of the . |Source=http://www.raeky.com/bison/, originally Burton Historical Collection, Detroit P
Its a shame what our ancestors did, used up what we could, even the land. Once a plot of land yielded gains for the farmer, they moved on further west and began again, as opposed to alternating planting and letting land rest for a season.
************
Glance Bandit
I tried to steal them constantly—in rearview
mirrors and staggered side by side, through
the screened-off window of a trailer
in your backyard. I wanted to slip
where you slept, purposely forget
to pack an extra sleeping bag
forever, and bust my mouth up
until please don’t go so far from me
sounds something like: I hope you love
California. You will love California.
Dig any hole you want.
I will come to you.
Lily Goderstad obtained her MFA in poetry from The New School. Her work has appeared in The Best American Poetry Blog, and is forthcoming in Dark Matter Journal and Vine Leaves Literary Journal. She currently lives in Queens, NY.
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BUS RIDE
Down the road,
a young boy walking in the dust.
A bus passes, whizzing by,
upsetting the cows and the flies.
‘I wonder where it’s going,
could it be Japan, or maybe Mexico.’
‘I’d like to see a bullfight.
Or maybe London,
with the funny-looking hats.’
‘Or Rome, or France.
Oh well, maybe just even Texas.’
He continues
down the road,
walking in the dust,
with only six pennies
and a rock in his pocket.
Mike Tupa began writing poetry at age 16 — during a car trip along a leafy, mountain road — and hasen’t kicked the habit since. A two-year church mission in Italy, a four-year active duty stint in the Marine Corps and four years of college haven’t cured him of any literary affliction. Some of Mike’s other publishing credits include poems printed in the Wilderness House Literary Review, Calliope Poets & Writers, and the Write Place at the Write Time.
June Issue- Week 3
June 18, 2013
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at the campfire’s edge
where light falls into silence
we cherish our dark
that gives life to your secret
and leaves mine forever dead
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.
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Who We Are
1.
We are the Wampum Belt-
Open at both Ends –
Still
Weaving Our Story.
We are the Sacred Drum.
That- Resilient Beat-
Pulsating
Within Mother Earth.
We are the 7th Fire-
Ignited by our past -Carrying the
Light
For our Future.
We are the Cedar Basket,
Sewn from the Roots of the Universe-
Forever
Expanding Our Spirit.
2.
We are the Survivors
& Revivers.
The Relations of the Forest-
& Educated by the Sun.
We Rise- like the sturdy Green Cornfields –
That Kiss the Cranberry Dawn.
We are the Deep Red Ocean-
Flowing within the Arteries –
Of Turtle Island.
3.
And-Yes.
We Swam through the Blood Soaked Tears-
Traversed the Wave over 500 Years.
The Unmarked Graves have Scarred our Dreams-
Long Walks & Trails- across the Icy Streams.
Those Boarding Schools and Reservations-
Malefic Schemes to encourage Limitations.
Mountains of Pain Shielded by a Smile-
Sometimes Surviving – means living in Denial.
Lethal Storms- Rain down like Shattered Glass,
Broken like Treaties – Amnesia of the Past.
Hair & Language- detached by foreign Hands-
But they both Return –as should Usurped Lands .
Our History & Journey- Carved from a Shell-
They do Not spill Oil-only Mark our Life’s Trail.
The tribe of Human Beings -is Who we Are-
Because All of Us- Revolve around the Same Star.
A Ceremony of Condolence –Is how We All Must Begin-
This is life’s Round Dance – a Circle with no End.
Larry Spotted Crow Mann is a writer, performer, Nipmuck cultural educator and citizen of the Nipmuck tribe of Massachusetts. He serves as the Drum Keeper of the Tribe which is a sacred trust. Their group is known as the Quabbin Lake Singers. He travels throughout the United States and Canada to schools, colleges, pow wows and other organizations sharing the music, culture and history of Nipmuck people. He has also given lectures at universities throughout New England on issues ranging from Native American Sovereignty to Identity.
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Cowgirls Factory Blues
Rising before the electric rooster crows,
Before the sun hugs the earth,
Ella slides out of bed
With an aching hip
Giving old Whiskey Breath a nudge
As he grunts and swears
In the same ritual every morning
For the past forty years as
She sets the chipped porcelain kettle
On the flame
To brew a morning cup
Sweetly reminding Larry
To fetch his own damn vittles, dear,
Feeding her leftover biscuits and bland gravy
To the little doggies
Before riding away in a dusty Mustang
To that brick and steel hold
Where she lassos washers and bolts
Head counting and time keeping
To the beat of her own twang
Until the workers in the factory embrace
Mosey out of the gate, single file,
Roaming free through the night,
While Ella stretches and cracks and creaks,
Thankful for her short journey home
After a wearisome day
On the urban range
That trounces too many spirits
Before the final ride off into the sunset
Denise Janikowski-Krewal is a Midwestern poet and writer of short fiction. She currently lives in the Milwaukee, WI area, and can be found at “the lost beat”where she collaborates with her cousin and fiction writer Tom Janikowski.
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Retreat From The Willamette
a family I knew began to go apart
when mother and daughter moved to Cascadia
dark little mountain hamlet
of woe in the rain oh woe
father and son remained at what was left of home
and in the bowling alley no one had to talk
and the river was up and had to get higher
but what did it have to do with the family
who reunited every weekend in a
dark little mountain hamlet
of woe in the rain oh woe
a Mormon-redneck town or just redneck-Mormon
of work and no chatter where the pine trees were high
and still growing on yew-ess twenty all the way
and the family had nothing to add either
as they waited out the fall of Sunday in that
dark little mountain hamlet
of woe in the rain oh woe
June Issue- Week 1
June 2, 2013
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SHAWNEE TRAIL
Come all you young cowboys so young and so hale
And I’ll tell you what happened on the old Shawnee Trail.
Come listen beside me and I’ll tell you the tale.
I got me a job for pretty good pay
Bein’ a wrangler for a rancher, the name of Bob Gray.
Taking ponies to Sedalia for a dollar a day.
We rode out one morning, the cowboys and me
Captain Gray lead us all, on his mare named Marie
My pal rode a paint, the one named Pawnee.
That horse was a killer, but we didn’t know then
How that paint had hurt more than a dozen good men
He would throw a good rider, time and again.
When that rider was down, God it was sad
That horse would go crazy, plum ravin’ mad
He’d stomp on the rider, and kick him real bad
Til the rider was dead and mashed in the ground
That horse wouldn’t stop but just whirl all around
And stomp the poor cowboy, that was there lying down.
That horse was smart; he would wait for his time
He’d be fine for a while and then turn on a dime
He’d spin like a top when commitin’ his crime
And then he’d start bucking, my God what a sight
He’d heave off the ground, goin’ high as a kite
No cowboy could ride him, you couldn’t set tight.
Captain Grey told my pal, “Don’t ride him you see
Just leave that damn paint horse to someone like me.
‘cause I’m gonna shoot him, I damn guarantee.”
Maybe my pal was too foolish and bold
He just didn’t believe in what he’d been told.
He said,” That horse is fine, he jist needs controlled
I am really your man, I aint terror struck
I’ll soon see if this outlaw can buck
If he tries to throw me, he’ll be down on his luck”
And he saddled the paint and with the ponies we rode
My pal seemed to have him, he didn’t explode
He seemed to be calm, like in a church mode.
Well we herded those ponies like they had wings
Until we got south of the town Baxter Springs
Now I seen some sights and some terrible things
But nothing prepared me for the sight I would see
When that damn paint horse started his spree
He spun and jumped higher then a goddamn dog flea
He was bucking and screaming like a mad grizzly bear
That was roused from his sleep and come from his lair
My Pal couldn’t stay on him, he hadn’t a prayer.
He reached for his night latch, to help himself stay
Screwed In the saddle, this wern’t child’s play
That paint was on his hind feet, when the saddle broke ‘way
The latigo busted and my pal hit the ground
And that paint was on him in one single bound
A kicking’ and stompin’ my pal who was downed
There was blood on the saddle and blood on the ground
My pal was a yellin’, a terrible sound
But that damn horse was still on him, he wasn’t unwound
Bob Grey rode up yelling, “get out of the way
Cause this is that Devils Goddamn last day”
He pulled out his pistol, a Colt forty four
And 6 shots went off with a hell of a roar.
That Paint went down, all covered with gore
He won’t kill no riders, not anymore.
But my pal lay dead there right next to that horse
Their blood run together as a matter of course
All in a pool as if from the same source.
In all my life, I seen nothin’ worse.
All we could do was stand there and curse
Our hearts was sad and filled with remorse.
We buried my pal right there on the trail
Wrapped in a blanket, his face was so pale
And over his grave the coyotes would wail
The bones of the Paint still mark the spot
So when you ride by, your horse at a trot
Jist give my pal more than a thought
Some horses are killers, that’s all I can say
And if you find one you best stay away
You may try to ride him but it’ll be your last day
On the trail near that pile of rottin’ horse bone
Listen to the south wind with its sad moan
And think of my pal, lying there all alone.
Merle Grabhorn is a rancher living in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. Yes, he does own and ride a horse, and yes, he drives a pickup truck down dusty dirt roads. And like all ranchers, he diversifies, growing wheat, soybeans, and milo, along with the hay that the cattle need in the winter.
His family came west by covered wagon in the 1850s and homesteaded. Some of his family drove horses and cattle along the Shawnee Trail. This trail is the South West’s eastern-most, earliest south-north trail. Before the railroads crossed the Mississippi River, Texas cattle were driven east to New Orleans. When the Pacific Railroad terminated in Sedalia, Missouri, cattlemen found it easier to take their cattle north. Using the rails, cattle could then be shipped to slaughter houses in St. Louis and Chicago much quicker than when traveling by ship from New Orleans. Horses could be driven north on the trail and sold to the Army in Sedalia.
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First Choral Sonnet
Now penetrators concentrated stones
Of silver pierce in shafts with sharpened picks,
Mining her guts, as mother Tellus groans,
In rival disembowelment to affix
Themselves. These delvers, axing depths, intent
On access to the earthen entera
Of ore, all rupturing her fundament
In rock, would argentine phenomena
Confirm. In Gaian innards grubbing, down
Toward the inmost domain of bowels they dig.
They’d shiver fundatorial earth, her brown
Intestines breaching where the find is big.
The pithiest sinuosity, fulfilled
With argent marrow, must be mined and milled.
Second Choral Sonnet
Nevadan cavers excavational
Evisceration speed in Davidson,
Where fissured strata, fused with mineral
Profundities, afforded by the ton,
Are struck. As burrowed indentations spread
In deeper ores of pitted danger, so
Interior horrors must be hazarded,
For ground spates shoot into the mines below
Five hundred feet with permeat magnitude
In steam. Thus noxious burrows, nether bound,
With vapid calefaction are imbued,
Where delves are veins with fervid trouble found.
Indented Davidson is disemboweled,
Down where her hollowed viscera unfold.
F. L. Light has written many sonnets and this piece is from his drama Bonanza Mammon Booms, a drama of the Comstock Lode, which is set in Virginia City, Nevada. The protagonist is William Sharon, principal of the Bank of California branch in Virginia City. The Lode was about two thirds silver and one third gold. Virginia City is now a tourist site. Alex Hyde-White, a well-known actor, is producing Mr. Light’s translation of *Oedipus the King* for Audible.com. *Antigone* and *Women of Trachis*, performed by other actors, are now listed there.
He begins with his Native Nipmuck tongue-
Wunne-Nog-Kishkoad-Tuonk! “Greetings, glad you’re here!”
I had the honor of attending the AWP 2013 Association of Writers and Writing Programs in Boston a few weeks ago and here Larry Spotted Crow Mann say this in person. He belongs to a group, WHIM Old School Indian Reading, featuring Monty Campbell, Jr., Barbara Mann, Paul Hapenny, Stephanie Elliott, Larry S Mann- and most used their native American names. Meet the new Indian Movement: W.H.I.M. (Woodlands Horizon Indian Movement for the politically correct and Woodlands Hotties Indian Movement for those who can still laugh). This multi-genre reading panel is comprised of Old School Woodlands Indians who read from their works and Larry Spotted Crow Mann performed the sacred drum song.
Hearing Larry play and sing a drum song was AWESOME! It was moving. His book is also moving.
Tales From the Whispering Basket is a book for all ages. Plain and Simple. His stories drafted from long passed down oral stories of generation Nipmuck to Nipmuck child from family and friends should be a task admired. I am currently collecting my oral memory stories told at gathering and from my own family members, and it is a hard task to compile details without muddling them up. Children should have this book in their hands, I would say reading ages and up. You may laugh when I say this, but it is in big print compared to some books I have in possession- a plus for the over 50 crowd (and I am smiling, but hey its true!)
The book starts off with a very well written introduction and goes into short stories- Deal Me In is a great read for those of us who like a slice of mystery with our slide of hand. A stranger knocks on the door while his Nipmuck clan play cards… Once again, a great read for young and old alike. Three more stories, and I don’t want to give it all away, then he goes into telling the story of how baskets play an important role in his tribes history and I suspect many tribes history. It is a heartwarming story which chronicles the journey of a sacred Nipmuck basket and how it affects everyone who come in contact with it; speaking real and painful issues facing native people yesterday and today.
Now to the meat- Larry’s Poetry- ‘I Have Been Here Before’…
…Ah Yes,
I have been here.
Half eaten worms have joined forces to extricate the nonbelievers.
Sanity stored and hidden in the usual place.
Hidden to self, for itself…
Gems of prose are weaved throughout each piece, like his ancestors baskets, and stories. Before I saw Larry read, I had wondered how I could bring the Native American tongue to these pages. Not wanting to be all about the great American Cowboy heroes, I am glad he consented to sharing his voice within Cowboy Poetry Press. Not because I feel the cowboy and Indian need to stand side by side, but because the culture is rich and should be shared, and in that way stand side by side.
Everyone’s side of the story needs to be told. I want to wipe out the old western shows which stung my mind with false history, eradicate Hollywood’s crap, and sit within the pow wow of my own native heritage (Cherokee Nation) and soak it all in. We can all learn from past mistakes to blessings. Larry’s book is one of many I hope to bring to the circle.
Larry’s book is the first of his journey into writing, and quite a delightful read, as said a few paragraphs ago, for young to old ages. Visit his website, Larry Spotted Crow Mann- Whispering Basket, where you can purchase his book and read more! We hope Larry will graciously submit works, along with his other brothers and sisters I met at AWP!
Photo from top of reveiw, above, was willfully and graciously given for use by Larry Spotted Crow Mann for use on Cowboy Poetry Press site, no one has permission to take it for their own personal use. Permission must be given by photo owner, Larry Spotted Crow himself, written permission may be made through his contact on Whispering Basket website.
Photo on bottom, above, is proof the author Elizabeth Akin Stelling, managing editor of Cowboy Poetry Press, whom read this book; if you notice, my computer corner and bed coverings could not be totally edited, the book finds no rest on my nightstand.
cowboypoetrypress 