Winter
Catching the Gap-Tooth Girl
Back Story
by Melissa Mylchreest
| 0 CommentsBack story to Gap-Tooth Girl Like so many poems, this one grew out of a fleeting, snapshot image: a local bar, a local band, and out on the dance floor, a lone couple swing dancing. As the girl turned toward me, I caught a flash of her smile, broad,... Read more
War on the Border
Interview
by David Zlutnick
| 0 CommentsAn Interview with Charles Bowden This interview originally appeared in the Weekend Edition of Counterpunch, July 8 - 10, 2011 http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/07/08/war-on-the-border/ War on the Border, An Interview with Charles Bowden, by David Zlutnick Charles Bowden is an author and journalist whose work has largely focused on the US/Mexico Border region. His writing has especially centered... Read more
Back story to Love on the Killing Ground
Back Story
by Charles Bowden
| 0 CommentsI got up this morning and starting walking at gray light through the hills and down under the cottonwoods and sycamores. There’d been a light shower at dusk and the world was fresh and clean. The cold settled in the draws and nothing much made a sound but two... Read more
Be Still
Poetry
by Cristina Rose Mastrangelo
| 0 Comments(Long enough for the snow to pile up.) The sheep stands still In the wind-blown barnyard Under clouds slung low on Cold, white mountainsides. It seems she stares blankly, From her docile, unfaltering Stance, out beyond these Fenced-in provisions of life. I turn my gaze... Read more
Tractor Ride for E
Poetry
by Dave Bilyeu
| 0 CommentsEnough of the illusions, schemes for more, friends who aren’t Instead, buy a hazelnut farm in the Willamette Valley shell nuts and stay warm on wet days while tending the roaster. We could trade in one life for another, picking one Thoreau inspired where the antidote for backsliding into haste and accusations... Read more
Evidence of Entropy
Poetry
by Jamie Houghton
| 0 Comments*I* Somewhere a man studies dryer lint as evidence of entropy what is lost? Think of world shrinking while eating cereal tie it into shoes as laces loosen with each step *II* Somewhere its sparkle or sickness a restless skin a keening in her blue a fanatic for birds her fingers breadcrumbs She wanders scrambling up granite cliffs throwing the dogs over... Read more
Naming the Sky
by Carol Gift
| 4 CommentsOne of my boyfriends says that I’m sexy with Jet-A fuel behind my ears. I suppose I’ve pumped enough of it over my lifetime for it to be a permanent part of my physiology – subtle, but powerful, like pheromones. I’m also hearing impaired. Too many years five feet... Read more
Seconds to Infinity
by Fawn McManigal
| 3 CommentsHow did a rigor-mortissed rabbit’s foot end up an icon for good-luck? After all, the rabbit absent his foot isn’t very lucky is he? But somewhere along the way the rabbit’s loss – capped in aluminum and strung on a short ball-chain – becomes our gain. Possession promises fortune... Read more
Gaylen Hansen / Interview excerpts for High Desert Journal
Interview
| 1 CommentsNot long ago I went to visit Palouse, Washington, artist Gaylen Hansen (HDJ issue #3). Hansen, of course, is the 89-year-old neo-expressionist, famous for his over-sized grasshoppers, incongruous ducks and dog heads, and a diminutive cowboy figure, the unflappable seeker Hansen calls the Kernal, Hansen's "alter ego" in paint. What follows... Read more
Western Lit. Blues
by Laura Pritchett
| 2 CommentsI don't like to gut fish. I grant you that a trout's fluorescent-colored guts are interesting to poke with a stick, but only for a short time, and only once in a great while. Mostly they are just slimy and smelly and get your hands all germy, which, if... Read more
Winnemem Wintu
by Marc Dadigan
| 2 CommentsThe Winnemem Wintu are a small Northern California tribe of 123 that traditionally lived on the McCloud River. During World War II, the federal government constructed the 600-foot Shasta Dam, which flooded the Winnemem’s homeland and submerged many of their sacred sites. To this day, the tribe, which is federally... Read more