A couple of cars ago, the family drove West … such a wide country, such wonderful vistas along the way. It was a great trip, but the drive back was something else again. I’ve thought of that drive often and finally wrote about it. Now a wonderfully handsome and impressive print journal called Midnight Mind published my poem “Flatland” in a section called “An Open Road Poetry Mix Tape (14 poems to recite on the open road.” You’d need to take a long drive to recite them all, but here’s mine.
Flatland
Spikes of lightning speared the earth as thunderstorms moved on the mountains. A tarantula cast a crook-leg shadow on the road ahead. Baked under a blazing sun and beguiled by the thorny plants that stood in for the trees of home we went on to Santa Fe with its picture postcard pueblos and up to Colorado ski country, then turned the Chevy East for home. But Kansas. Kansas stopped us with its mile on mile of featureless flatness. Not a tree or house in sight the horizon so wide you could almost see earth’s curve out there. I felt something at my back and thought of the pioneer wives running mad from wind and isolation not born to it like Kiowa and Comanche. At the next intersection we turned right trusting the road south to take us back to high country.
Many thanks to editor Brett Van Emst for including my poem in this special section.
A New Venture
Some months ago, I wrote about my friend Richard Eric Johnson and included “The Hurricane’s Eye,” one of his poems published in Vietnam War Poetry, an impressive online archive established by Paul Hellweg “to foster greater understanding of the Vietnam War and its impact on America, Vietnam, the veterans of both sides, and all people involved either directly or indirectly.” Since then, Eric suggested I apply to serve as poetry editor for that site.
It never occurred to me to seek such a position … and I have no real knowledge of the Vietnam War or indeed, any military action. But here I am, VWP poetry editor. And I’ve even taken on editing a chapbook by a friend of the site’s founder.