October 2021 | poetry
Apache Indians hunt the buffalo.
Comanche arrive on the war trail to Mexico,
the Apaches disappear.
On the staked plain, a sacred white buffalo waters at Deep Creek.
A hunter shoots the albino with ease
and skins it as tumbleweeds tumble by.
Pete from Pennsylvania opens a trading post.
Big cattle ranches arrive.
Rusty untangles a hung up goat.
Barb wire cuts into its neck.
Nearby, a mare nudges its foal.
The Santa Fe Railroad lays tracks through town
and builds a depot, and men warm themselves
by a fire of burning crossties.
The Snyder Rodeo Arena opens.
Overseas, Snyder’s son Bobby orders his men across a canal.
Bobby is fatally hit by enemy fire.
Farmers plant cotton in cow pastures.
The bank folds in the Great Depression.
Friday night football begins,
Snyder Tiger adolescents become heroes.
A prospector discovers the Canyon Oil Reef,
the town triples in size.
A Phillips 66 gas station-restaurant opens.
Powers Boothe flees Snyder, acts in movies.
Oil collapses. Money leaves.
A boy falls asleep watching a Zenith television
in a small frame house on 3765 Avondale.
A dung beetle rolls a ball of dung
on a scraggly cattle ranch at town the edge.
The citizens erect a white buffalo statue.
They argue about its testicles, remove them.
A rich man parks a gold-plated Delorean
in the Snyder National Bank lobby.
An employee at the gas plant claims a UFO hovers,
a disc with lights, soars to the southwest.
Tumbleweeds ramble across the fields into mesquite.
The wind reveals an arrowhead in a creek bed.
Down the dirt lane where huge wind turbines line the horizon,
the white buffalo skin hangs on a ranch house wall, decays.
Alan Nelson
Alan Nelson has poetry and stories published or forthcoming in numerous journals including New York Quarterly, The Stand, Acumen, Pampelmousse, Main Street Rag, Texas Observer, California Quarterly, Connecticut River Review, Adirondack Review, Red Cedar Review, Wisconsin Review, South Carolina Review, Ligeia and Whale Road Review. He also played the lead in the viral video “Does This Cake Make Me Look Gay?” and the verbose “Silent Al” in the Emmy-winning “SXSWestworld.”
October 2021 | poetry
I’m standing there, looking
at my old grade school’s set
of monkey bars. I can touch them
with my forehead. I almost do,
hoping to go back.
But I start to sink,
alternating legs, by inches as
I walk. I run and still sink,
feeling more than hearing
the laughter of the child,
grown giant underground,
grabbing hand-over-hand
at my moving feet. I reach
the sidewalk slogging mid-thigh
through earth, and lose both shoes
as I pull myself out.
Once should have been enough.
Mark Henderson
Mark Henderson is an associate professor of English at Tuskegee University. He earned his Ph. D. at Auburn University with concentrations in American literature and psychoanalytic theory. He has poems published or forthcoming in Cozy Cat Press, From Whispers to Roars, Defenestrationism.net, Bombfire, Former People, Neologism, Broad River Review, Rune Bear, Flora Fiction, Flare, and Visitant. He was born and raised in Monroe, Louisiana, and currently resides in Auburn, Alabama.
October 2021 | poetry
cattails in a bag, carried home on my back
best eaten in the winter, & we’re ten weeks
from the last frost, & the coming on of weeks
& weeks where vaccinations become
engagement rings, become christmas in spring,
become brushed hair & earrings & dinners
outside where i can see you
i can see you now, still, when i close my eyes
& hear your voice through the phone, remembering
how you make me laugh, hanging my feet
out the window, like it wasn’t just a year ago,
eating grapes on the porch steps, putting
crushed beer cans in the mailbox, or
talking grit from the backseat of your car
lunaria in a manila envelope & nightshade
from the dumpster; cockscomb in an altoid tin,
& the decision to stay through summer
& the voracious need to start a garden,
& the ache to be outside alone
& the dream to be inside this body
like i am inside this body
the dog, pissing on the hardwood doesn’t have a name,
& even if no name comes, there will be tomatoes,
& this summer the only fear i will have
is how i will keep track of all the vegetables
& flowers, seedlings in egg cartons,
tugging at my shoestrings, & what light
will i bury them in
all winter, i walked under a murder of crows,
crossing the bridge after work & a week of
single digit weather; when this city spends
over half the year in gray, the crows
taking my breath against the blue sky,
only half knowing the summer will take
the tens of thousands of them away
then, when the dog stops barking,
when the crows stop coming,
how will you know
i am almost home
Danica Depenhart
Danica Dagenhart is a Pittsburgh-based writer, maker, & educator. they are a recipient of The Alex Rowan Award for poetry writing, & their work has been featured in TriQuarterly and Pretty Owl Poetry. you can find them on Instagram @motherweather.
October 2021 | poetry
Chances
We paid the price.
The chances of victory
can be measured
by self-sacrifice—
a miracle out of which
all the chances grow.
Without Any Sound
Silent afternoon. Silence is more expressive.
I feel something is beaming in my blood. Light.
Some strength inside my nerves wants to be free.
I feel fever. I feel I have a key to every door
in my life. Silent afternoon is telling me,
now—
nobody here, nobody there,
nobody under the sun can give me
either the key or the door to close or open,
except myself. I see now —
nobody ever figures out
or tells me directly what’s life all about.
I will put the gun down, who stands
beside me matters more.
David Dephy
David Dephy — A Georgian/American award-winning poet and novelist. The winner of the Finalist Award in the 2020 Best Book Award National Contest by American Book Fest, the finalist and shortlist winner nominee of the Adelaide Literary Awards for the category of Best Poem, the winner of the Spillwords Poetry Award. He is named as A Literature Luminary by Bowery Poetry, The Stellar Poet by Voices of Poetry, The Incomparable Poet by Statorec, The Brilliant Grace by Headline Poetry & Press and An Extremely Unique Poetic Voice by Cultural Daily.
October 2021 | poetry
About one month or two ago,
on the walk we take almost every day,
when passing by a well-known bridge in my city,
I noticed, not without some sorrow,
that there was a family living under it,
at a corner they had cleaned on the riverbank.
I was filed with sadness, for sure they were homeless,
or, at least, temporarily, having as roof
the lower part of that framework.
Yesterday, while walking with my wife, we perceived
that there was something different, a few more people,
in addition to the family we were used to seeing.
A couple of bonfires lit better the area,
they talked and were very comfortable,
laughing and happy, it seems we even heard
something like a clink of glasses.
My wife was surprised and did not understand,
but, suddenly, I did, and told her:
there is no doubt, they are having guests today
and are having fun.
Then, we became aware that, really, since a while,
we have not enjoyed much the same this pleasure.
Edilson Afonso Ferreira
Mr. Ferreira, 78 years, is a Brazilian poet who writes in English rather than in Portuguese. Widely published in international literary journals, he began writing at age 67, after his retirement as a bank employee. Has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and his book Lonely Sailor, One Hundred Poems, was launched in London, in November of 2018. He is always updating his works at www.edilsonmeloferreira.com.
October 2021 | poetry
Entire environs have become
transmitters of an over-personified manifestation
twisting through the Multidimensional Ether
like counterclockwise wisteria sprouting
from the lungs of ashen children.
It’s the inevitable scorch.
The painful kiss.
The curiosity that intellectualized the cat
before killing it.
Mouths turn the shape of cheerios
and stare at the sky, awestricken,
observing an event
equivalent to some
vague description
from a biblical passage.
Heath Brougher
Heath Brougher is the Editor-in-Chief of Concrete Mist Press as well as poetry editor for Into the Void, winner of the 2017 and 2018 Saboteur Awards for Best Magazine. He is a multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net Nominee and received the 2018 Poet of the Year Award from Taj Mahal Review. He also received the 2020 Wakefield Prize for Poetry. He has published eleven books and, after two years of editing the work of others, is ready to get back into the creative driver seat. His book “Where Hammers Dwell” will be published later in 2021.
