I was delighted to see my poem “Scarecrow Calls Out the Man” reprinted on the progressive, non-profit journalism site Common Dreams and that the heading of the “Further” column, “The Smallness of You,” is extracted from the poem.
Read the column here.
Scarecrow is indeed getting around.
Links to my publications, March – May 2017.
West Texas Literary Review
“Gulf”
Quiet Letter
“Memory and Closets”
“Strollermelon”
“Cutting Down the Anniversary Pine”
LCk Publishing
Sault St. Marie
Rat’s Ass Review
“Sensing My Dismay at the Election Results, My Wife’s Dog Presses against Me”
La Presa
“Even the Light”
Oxidant|Engine
“When to Say Goodbye“
GFT Presents: One in Four
“Scarecrow Believes”
“The Boy Who Wouldn’t Hoe Corn”
Life among the Prickly Pear
Rain’s twofold curse: not enough
too much. Still, I take comfort
even among the thorns.
There is much to like here.
Its moonlight flowers.
Paddles fried with minced garlic.
Wren’s jubilant shriek.
The fruit’s red nectar.
I wake to distant screech owls
purring their desires on separate
slopes. Late spring, storms looming.
I close my eyes and the creek rises.
* * *
A draft of this first appeared here in June 2015, and I posted this version in May 2016. It seemed appropriate to this stormy weekend. On a personal note, I’ll need to inspect a flood-prone creek on Monday. I wonder how it will be…
In the meantime, two of my guitar heroes:
Echo Charm
Right on left, or returned
what circles back, unbroken
yet opened?
Your mouth centers me.
Diminished, I rise, listening.
Grass rubbing against grass.
The lizard’s scarlet throat, swelling.
Not refusal, but denial.
Eyes the color of blood.
You practice your words carefully,
repeating each special phrase.
Blood the color of sky.
Sky the color of eyes.
And always the warm shade.
Links to my publications for January – February 2017:
The Slag Review
“Scarecrow Pretends”
Sourland Mountain Review
“I Praise the Moon Even When She Laughs”
Silver Birch Press “Me at 17” Prose and Poetry Series
“Letter from Kansas”
Postcard Poems and Prose Magazine
“Runaway Bus”
Glass: A Journal of Poetry
“What We Say When We Say Nothing”
Calamus
“Palinode (sol, ischemia, night)”
Steel Toe Review
“How to Do Nothing”
“And All Around, the Withered”
B. McClellan’s Weblog (International Poetry Month)
“From Left to Right I Ponder Politics and Kanji”
“A Brief History of Babel”
Taos Journal of International Poetry & Art
“Henry Lee Remembers Grandmother’s Garden”
“What are You Going to Do (Cento)”
“Magic”
“The Draft”
“Diverting Silence”
Matt Larrimore, editor of Four Ties Lit Review, interviewed me in September 2014:
http://fourtieslitreview.com/home/interviews/interview-with-robert-okaji/
Listening to Cicadas, I See Charlottesville (Ghazal)
Shedding one coat, you live in the red, apart
from the rest. Never together, forever apart.
In this sun-drenched field, the cracks drill deeper,
wider, dribbling soil and small lives, expanding, apart.
What falls truer than any words released from this man?
Once divided, never again to touch, always apart.
The electric shrill fluctuates pitch, in unison. Hundreds
of tymbals, shredding dusk, now together, then apart.
You narrow your eye to a slit, but still see the entire
spectrum. Wing clicks, stridulation. Whole yet apart.
Shearing syllables, I learn the language of half-truth.
What is my name? I reach for that fragment. It falls apart.
I thought it might be worthwhile to assemble these in one place, to make it easier for anyone interested in reading my recent publications.
MockingHeart Review
“This Island is a Stone”
Vox Populi
“Scarecrow Calls Out the Man”
The Icarus Anthology
“Shadow Charm”
“Forgetting Charm”
Blue Fifth Review
“Heroes”
The Mantle
“Overlooked”
The Lake
“Letter to Wright from Between Gusts”
Eclectica
“A Word Bathing in Moonlight”
“Scarecrow Dreams”
“Missing Loved Ones”
Birch Gang Review
“Landscape with Jar”
Blue Bonnet Review
“Buddha’s Not Talking”
Picaroon Poetry
“Memorial Day, 2015”
Bright Sleep
“The Sky Withholds”
Crannóg
“Scarecrow Sings the High Lonesome”
Outcast Poetry
“The Theory and Practice of Rebellion”
O at the Edges 