February 20-26, 2017: Poetry from Mike Jurkovic and Taylor Graham

breathing machine

It’s all lumped in my brain right now
but I do recall another poem
you didn’t read about the mayhem genius
who took great lengths
to insure each mourner
had enough rope, scotch tape,

and a six foot ladder.

Small provisions, admittedly.
But he was running out of tricks.
The old brain didn’t click
like it used to. You reach a point

where the ground gives way

he told his nurse. A bright, young gal
w/a bright, young future. Until, y’know,
they turn out the lights and the breathing machine

Gold Rush Days, The Divide

She peeled off her dress with its chain-
stitch embroidery the camisole & petticoats
bone stiff corset
she had to get out of this century this shackle
of fashion chemise & pantelettes
the whole plaster cast
of clothes molding
how a woman was supposed
to be held together till she fainted dead
away white as porcelain

no
she had to slip
into mens trousers stolen off the line
blustering in a change-of-weather wind
a roomy shirt
that let the shoulders work
unbutton the collar
had to get out
in the open, run free before all the
gold the life the breath of it
was gone

Off the Forest Road

The 10-point buck, gray squirrel,
jackrabbit, cougar must have thought
the world was ending

when miners felled the tall pines and cedars,
aimed their Monitor
to water-blast the earth into craters.

A hundred years ago and more.
Miners took what they could
and left

the craters still there.
Logging roads dodge around the old
pocked mine-field. Scars

overgrown with bear-clover,
tall pines rising from the mined-out depths.
Watch your step.

My dog shows me coyote scat
along the way. Raven says Man comes
and goes, the forest stays.