Saturday, July 30, 2011

Hola Chi-Town



White out – 747 – where’s ole Chicago town?

Big city lights replace double-door saloons
         And a bourbon on the rocks at quarter past noon
         Might ease the pain if I can’t get a room
         Damn this windy city, keep me sane

Bright horizon – 747 – here comes Chicago town

Western buttes meat Eastern ties and suits
         Where high-heels and skirts trump beanies and boots
         Blackberries, laptops, palm pilots and tight wads
         Must be the low elevation, not me that’s odd

Strobe-light ice – 747 – hola chi-town

Show me jazz and show me Wilco, trumpets and overtones
         Not watered-down suburbs, CEO’s and street drones
         The air is as old as the grass is fake
         Why haven’t these robots made the great escape?

O’Hare nightmare – 24/7 – good ole chi-town

Da bears, da bulls, loud talkers spread the news
         Muddy, Buddy and BB are kings of the blues
         If the music doesn’t save me, I’m still amused
         ‘Cause I actually like this city – I’m just weary and bruised 

- Aaron Davis 

Aaron Davis is an award-winning songwriter, journalist, and photographer. His local bands Screen Porch Door and Aaron Davis & The Docks perform regularly in the region.

The Trap


“. . . the way
The night knows itself with the moon.”
-Rumi, The Big Red Book

Nights running my husband set the trap, rammed the Havahart between the chicken coop’s gate, looped the wire as if it, like the hens the fox desired, might tantalize the fox—the one who, like the night, “knows itself with the moon;” as if the fox might forget what it knew and walk into that strange mechanical den. Nights running my husband dreamed the fox into forgetting what it knew of what’s what and what is not: the scent left by fences and houses, the geography shifted by moonlight and cloud, the landscape of shadow where the hay mice snoozed and the hens roosted. Nights running my husband dreamed. But at dawn, while my husband dozed like a god, the trap was tripped by a skunk.

- Connie Wieneke 

Connie Wieneke lives in Wilson, Wyoming.

Dreams

Dreaming is water
It is smooth and clear
It does not need to be open
It only needs the stableness of the spirit
The fruit with a heart
In it the face of dust that unifies the universe
And that becomes many
The light comes, trespassing what is invisible
Believing in what it is, rather what is not
The life within life that carries light
Reality it is not, but real is the essence of been not
Something is born out of nothing
The waking up.

- Gabriel Chapeton

Gabriel Chapeton graduated from Journeys School in 2011. 

The Magpies


I have binoculars out to look at the magpies
resting in the branches of the scrubby pine
outside.  
The snow is melting beyond the window.
A few fallen leaves rattle around in the wind.
A glass sits on the table in front of me.
The water
glows a little in the sunlight.
I raise the lenses, magnifying the birds.

Inside the house, I do not hear the magpies.
Once their young start to fledge,
their cackling in the bushes will disturb
                        my sleep.
The gabbling of their hungry voices
will break the spell cast by the long,
black tail feathers waving iridescent
green and blue,
the violet sheen. 
On this morning
they are silent and wondrous as macaws.

In the grass beyond I see the remains
of a robin’s empty nest decaying
                        on the ground. 
A dead chick
left by the magpies rests on the box
defining the entrance to the house.
                        The season is too young yet
                        to think of planting flowers there.
I will hide the pink flesh, feathers and bones
                        from my son
by casting the carcass under the pine. 

The eyecups of the binoculars cool the skin
                        above my cheeks.
The heft identical to that of the BB gun
I borrowed as a boy when I used to roam
                        the willow-dotted fields
                        hunting magpies.
The copper pellets cracked
against the tangled sticks, silenced the young birds
                        in their nests
The cold of the metal lingers on my face
                        as I sip the water
                        and my ordinary secrets bloom.

- Matt Daly 

Matt Daly teaches in Jackson area schools and throughout Wyoming. He is the Media Coordinator for pARTners.