1. Oil prices
2. Corn prices
3. Prices in general
I hope you have a few to add to the list of a more
personally satisfying nature. As for me, July is my favorite month, the 4th one of my favorite holidays
because I usually can do whatever I want (Independence Day, right?), and I’ve
never gotten over my love for fireworks.
I thought I’d leave my guest blogging week with a couple of poems. Both of these are from my unpublished full-length prose poem manuscript, Her Name Is Juanita, about a woman and a donkey only she can hear.
July
On a golf course somewhere in Germany a pair of storks protect their nest full of golf balls. On the outskirts of some utopia a donkey lives her unseen days. In a house not too far off a woman bends forward toweling her hair. Out the window a high-toned mockingbird blunts the jay’s dry cough. The storks take turns setting, first turning each golf ball; the donkey rubs its butt against the fence; the woman applies make-up. The mockingbird will not fly off. This is all about Juanita, the shared territory, these few acres, the airspace. How light is faster than sound though light’s movement cannot be seen and sound leaps, untraceable. The ecstatic? An encounter to which we can only point. We cannot duplicate. It’s July, smellful, the garden’s own ecstasy. You hear the plants, a Salsa, rasp their leaves in time. Oxygen molecules expand, ignite Juanita’s nostrils. Wordless she raises her muzzle, banshee-blasts an inexplicable wheeze. You wonder where’s the ground, where’s . . .?
The mockingbird resumes. The woman puts on her underwear. The storks keep watch in Germany. Chickens haven’t squawked in weeks.
Fourth of Juanita
Juanita is
July. Of course she is. Heat and unrideable breeze. The burn begins when you
swing your legs out of bed, walk barefoot across wooden floor to the open
window. A smell of fresh tar and creosote. Flags fail to flap. She is a memory
to fondle, a token in my pocket, a ring on a chain around my neck. Or did I
only imagine? Do I? Apt. Each firework always bigger than the last, louder,
choreographed to music and passion’s swell. Incendiary spray of purple, green,
the surprise of golden meteors pause, drop like molten wax, cool to cinder you
flick from your arm. You wait for the
next explosion. The mind’s eye widens in recollection: a night to remember, one
like no other. Such spectacles can’t be trusted. However they are all I have.
Like a donkey I follow in the tracks worn before me. What has been traveled, what
will be traveled again and again. July the exception. Fireflies, firework grand
finale, every constellation undiminished wavers some promise overhead.
(first appeared in Dos
Passos Review)
Here's the url; I'm having a problem with links this am:
http://brierycreekpress.org/
If you’re interested in reading a few more, go to the online
journal, failbetter.com. They're in Issue 20.
And if you’re looking to have your patriotic spirits lifted, that is if you like Bill Moyers, check out the speech he made last month at the National Conference for Media Reform. For text only or for a full view YouTube treatment. It might make you want to go out and write something.
As for me, I’ve got a Parade to catch! Happy Fourth. It’s
been a fun week. See you in the ether . . .
-Sally Ashton
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