Linger (Frank Stanford):
The moon wanders through my barn
Like a widow heading for the county seat
It's not dark here yet
I'm just waiting for the bow hunters
So I can run them off
They put out licks on my land
Every summer
When it gets cool the animals are tame
I've fallen asleep
In the trees before
I dreamed someone's horse
Had wandered out on the football field
To graze
And I was showing children through a museum
The bow hunters make their boys
Pull the deer's tongue out bare-handed
At dusk when I hear an arrow
Coming through my field like a bird
I wonder what men have learned
From feathers
The animals wade the creek
And eat blackberries
The wind blows through the trees
Like a woman on a raft
Like a widow heading for the county seat
It's not dark here yet
I'm just waiting for the bow hunters
So I can run them off
They put out licks on my land
Every summer
When it gets cool the animals are tame
I've fallen asleep
In the trees before
I dreamed someone's horse
Had wandered out on the football field
To graze
And I was showing children through a museum
The bow hunters make their boys
Pull the deer's tongue out bare-handed
At dusk when I hear an arrow
Coming through my field like a bird
I wonder what men have learned
From feathers
The animals wade the creek
And eat blackberries
The wind blows through the trees
Like a woman on a raft
im not dead...but im hurting from this stanza:
ReplyDeleteAt dusk when I hear an arrow
Coming through my field like a bird
I wonder what men have learned
From feathers
Dave is having me read stanford for my thesis. I got to sound smart cus you introduced me to him about 4 days before dave did.
woohoo
p.s. i dont know why my gmail account comes up as "leviathan" or "mothersavage"
ReplyDeletebut ok....
i think the block partie website is fucking with my identity or something.
Stanford is the man. My friend Zach Hagar who doesn't have any internet identity and whose phone number I lost and subsequently haven't seen in like three years introduced me to his poetry. When I read his poetry I think about the fact that I probably will never see Zach again.
ReplyDeleteStanford wrote a book-length poem called The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You. This is on my list of things to read soon. I don't know if they have it in the CC library--I've only read the excerpt in his selected poems--but it is nuts and worth finding via amazon or whatever. It's like Huck Finn minus the comedy and plus the recognition of its own violence and beauty.
Anyway, glad you liked the stanza.