undrowned in your sleep
her morning star still hangs
long across fields, the crooked
shore on the bay rise and roll
through paths that your father
and mother went strolling down
half drunk, and laughing like hell,
before the war and wheat prices
broke their backs look—
for love, a grey squirrel leaps
from the branch of a blackened hemlock
for courage, an ochre line slices straight
from stone to a wolverine’s borough
for death, a murmuration of birds
wraps the new sun in a shroud
of undulating fist the bottle of Stoli is empty
yet you’re alive, eager to dance
a jig on the sill of the sky you hope
an
I wake through my cloud to the mirror
of wave after wave of light.
From the planks of the dock I rise to the sound
of the sea’s one ringing bell, where the tall ships un-hook
from their moorings and leap to the eastern dawn. My purpose:
a woman I know who is waiting, her body a fragment
of corbeau kicked up by the moon – a fragment
as whole as an image of its mirror.
One path hugs tight to my heels. The purpose
of paths is to walk me through light,
that I might come from the shadows and hook
the stone of my heart to the loam’s deep sound.
The day in its prancing is singing the lyric and sound
of a kingfisher’s chuck
When I was youth-fanged and frothed
with iron blood, I took my first love to a tangled gully
where one red oak stood roped in knots
of bramble and cane. We climbed
to a leaf-stripped branch and balanced,
greenly alive under the stillness
of a quartermoon's waning gaze.
She settled as dampened ferns in rain,
spraddled and stretched like a silk blouse caught
on a thorn. Her back to me,
lambs-wool sweater bunched at my mouth,
her neck's nape was tapered, shaped
by my lips and tongue.
I remember the gut-shot
buck appeared, like a bullet through an elf owl's shadow.
Below us, it dropped
on its front legs, retched and scattered dirt to stars
Rouge-cheeked Rosie, a bubblegum posy
with a lickity-split and a swivel as slick
as ice-cream cake, she’ll make you cozy
whether metrosex or Tennessee hick.
Flanked by angels and devil-spanked,
the judge what fudged her trial
got hoodwinked raw and voir dire wanked
like a hobo dazzled by a hog-poor smile.
Now a hemp noose waits at the county line,
with a slack-jawed posse in the Blue Ridge hills;
above, the boughs burn gold and fine—
What she don’t take, the hangman steals.
There’s a dog-eared page in her book of days
that the bondsman never read before;
the sumac’s hair is a ponceau bla
Child Labor - Southern Cotton Mill by Adeimantus, literature
Literature
Child Labor - Southern Cotton Mill
First the Catawba Mill doffer boys come in twilight; they punch
the headstone rows of bales with finger-missing fists
while wheeling down to card and sweep. Then come
the Carolina spinner girls, drifting in on gingham wings.
They imagine their tresses the weft of the twill.
All day and night they glint among the jennies, flick
and curry Bo weevils from dusty hair, heave
to cotton's bidding, and in dim shadows poke
their needle-sighs through canvasses of work.
The lint on their breathing blooms nimbi of light.
Riven through, some drop in place on spindled stilts,
or stand knee-buckled by the weight of thread
upon the thread, as if the shift
undrowned in your sleep
her morning star still hangs
long across fields, the crooked
shore on the bay rise and roll
through paths that your father
and mother went strolling down
half drunk, and laughing like hell,
before the war and wheat prices
broke their backs look—
for love, a grey squirrel leaps
from the branch of a blackened hemlock
for courage, an ochre line slices straight
from stone to a wolverine’s borough
for death, a murmuration of birds
wraps the new sun in a shroud
of undulating fist the bottle of Stoli is empty
yet you’re alive, eager to dance
a jig on the sill of the sky you hope
an
I wake through my cloud to the mirror
of wave after wave of light.
From the planks of the dock I rise to the sound
of the sea’s one ringing bell, where the tall ships un-hook
from their moorings and leap to the eastern dawn. My purpose:
a woman I know who is waiting, her body a fragment
of corbeau kicked up by the moon – a fragment
as whole as an image of its mirror.
One path hugs tight to my heels. The purpose
of paths is to walk me through light,
that I might come from the shadows and hook
the stone of my heart to the loam’s deep sound.
The day in its prancing is singing the lyric and sound
of a kingfisher’s chuck
When I was youth-fanged and frothed
with iron blood, I took my first love to a tangled gully
where one red oak stood roped in knots
of bramble and cane. We climbed
to a leaf-stripped branch and balanced,
greenly alive under the stillness
of a quartermoon's waning gaze.
She settled as dampened ferns in rain,
spraddled and stretched like a silk blouse caught
on a thorn. Her back to me,
lambs-wool sweater bunched at my mouth,
her neck's nape was tapered, shaped
by my lips and tongue.
I remember the gut-shot
buck appeared, like a bullet through an elf owl's shadow.
Below us, it dropped
on its front legs, retched and scattered dirt to stars
Rouge-cheeked Rosie, a bubblegum posy
with a lickity-split and a swivel as slick
as ice-cream cake, she’ll make you cozy
whether metrosex or Tennessee hick.
Flanked by angels and devil-spanked,
the judge what fudged her trial
got hoodwinked raw and voir dire wanked
like a hobo dazzled by a hog-poor smile.
Now a hemp noose waits at the county line,
with a slack-jawed posse in the Blue Ridge hills;
above, the boughs burn gold and fine—
What she don’t take, the hangman steals.
There’s a dog-eared page in her book of days
that the bondsman never read before;
the sumac’s hair is a ponceau bla
Child Labor - Southern Cotton Mill by Adeimantus, literature
Literature
Child Labor - Southern Cotton Mill
First the Catawba Mill doffer boys come in twilight; they punch
the headstone rows of bales with finger-missing fists
while wheeling down to card and sweep. Then come
the Carolina spinner girls, drifting in on gingham wings.
They imagine their tresses the weft of the twill.
All day and night they glint among the jennies, flick
and curry Bo weevils from dusty hair, heave
to cotton's bidding, and in dim shadows poke
their needle-sighs through canvasses of work.
The lint on their breathing blooms nimbi of light.
Riven through, some drop in place on spindled stilts,
or stand knee-buckled by the weight of thread
upon the thread, as if the shift
My new novel has been launched:
https://www.amazon.com/Gichi-Manidoo-Charles-J-Musser/dp/057849695X/
If you decide to purchase a copy and read it, a review, however short, on Amazon would be incredibly appreciated. Thanks!
Many thanks for the kind and generous honor of a DD for my poem, "Autumn Stag," and for the lovely comments. I have no idea what the Llama things are for, but I assume they're a good thing and so I thank you all for them as well.
Hey man, glad you're getting on well. Enjoy all your photos but I'd basically be saying 'COOL LOL ' on all of them, so consider me a silent appreciator.
And who's the lovely lady friend there? Nice one m8.
No problem, and thanks. Just dipping my toe in a bit. It's habit-forming, and relaxing, although it can be used, I'm discovering, as one of many excuses not to sit down and write something.