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JOHN MACKER
Serial Wolf Killer Prays to Our Lady Of Refuge He paces the perfect incandescent cage Translucent sharpshooter of the Americas Thinks Billy The Kid still lives in Silver City Little things about him are ornery and Wrong: has wired the Gila to His own lost soul October mornings in the dew Chihuahuan tequila shooters Chronic jolt to the heart Five hours a night with One eye open in missile silo Slumber. Dormant dreamscape Volcanoes spew forth his Mexican Wolves and they procreate in the Misty mountain shadows The redoubt of endangered gods. He uses Our Lady of Refuge and “outlaw” in the same prayer Has known the blues of hunger Has entered nirvana through the back door A couple of alcoholic kids later, He blesses his lobo across the cold river Between the eyes Calls him brother Will travel. Sonnet XXVIII (Chaco Canyon) October weds the first snows together like a seamstress. Our Marriage is horses dreaming underground. We rake in the stillness, All those nesting prairie leaves as dry as static. She greets me With an autumn-colored mouth, hands flying about the desert like gypsy moths. Suddenly, this tableau vivant is Peppered by gunfire. Wedding guests scatter like dirty socks. We Wipe the snow gingerly off the cake while making rogue love Noises, as the still day gusts up from the breath of Cortez’ Horse. Arms entwined sipping absinthe, we swear off Iraq, driving in Mexico City, cheap champagne, walking in rhythm with an anti-Christ & westerns That begin with the word “I”, as in I may be gaining a wife but losing A paradox. Out here where the unvarnished clouds freeze the rain in a tableau of Naked frontier anarchy. We are slightly drunk, we are prayer flags, we are Joined at the hips to the coiled serpent of Chaco Canyon. John Macker lives in Northern New Mexico with his wife in an old roadhouse on the Santa Fe Trail. Books and broadsides of poetry include For The Few, The First Gangster, Burroughs At Santo Domingo, 2 +2=1, and black/wing (cd) among others. In 2001, won the James Ryan Morris Memorial “Tombstone” Award for poetry. Has given public readings with writers such as S.A. Griffin, Frank Rios, Tony Scibella, Gregory Corso, Andy Clausen, Ed Dorn, Linda Hogan among others. Has had essays and poems published in journals and magazines throughout the U.S. including, most recently, Manzanita Quarterly, Sin Fronteras (Writers Without Borders), Pitchfork, Black Ace Book 7, Mercury Reader, A People’s Ecology: Explorations In Sustainable Living and a large section from a new manuscript Adventures In The Gun Trade was featured in Mad Blood #2, October 2003. In Colorado, in the early-mid 90’s edited the award-winning literary arts journal, Harp, which featured interviews and poetry by Robert Bly, Gregory Corso, Charles Bukowski,Tony Scibella, Diane DiPrima and many others. Has two dogs and when time permits, listens to the wind. |
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© 2003 Underground Voices |
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