John Macker

Hi Larry & thanks.

Guest edited latest Malpais Review w/14 Colorado poets: "there is nothing so beautiful as the sound of dreaming across borders" & wrote an essay on Venice West legend Tony Scibella. Also Herrera, abeyta, Camp, Stablein, Tani Arness, Kell Robertson, Simon Ortiz, etc etc. Nice issue. Also participating in panel discussion on Southwestern author Frank Waters with John Nizalowski & Alexander Blackburn up at the Harwood in Taos on Wed. Aug. 3rd. 7 p.m. Going to write an essay on Todd Moore for last Malpais. Busy working & worrying about the state of the world. Here's a poem about some things I've been thinking about.

Massacre

                    −for Joe Somoza

On any other Sunday if the kitchen

light had a voice it would sing

like Mavis Staples

all the birds would be

politely silenced by the poet

who sits in his

Las Cruces garden on mornings

like this for

twenty-two years

writing poems

in the shade of a tall tree

so he wouldn’t later on

lose his mind.

The rooster would crow dawn up

from polished black to soft blue

full-throated throughout the neighborhood

many of the children would go

politely and without incident to mass

my prayer flags would still have nine lives.

On any other Sunday,

nobody would rise haunted with the

ghost sickness or deny the Coyote within.

Anybody would believe the full moon

or at least the ghost of moon

as yellow as yarrow

as it traveled across the shores of our eyes

or June with its rampaging fahrenheits.

Each tree is an indeterminate amount of

time rooted deep

I think, therefore I think I’m an act of faith

unfathomable morning

I’m walking through cottonwood snow.

John Macker

                               

thanks for all you do, Larry. I very much like your latest books. Bravo.

well maybe life as a poet is worthwhile after all - thank you John