Empathetic openness sucks in the roaring energy The sensitive dark mind explodes with rings of color The night is spent in migraine The after-world is timid and cold This world and its men are too harsh for me Without a word they scream and rage Where can I hide from them They even chase me into my dreams I wish my soul had calluses Hard skin to protect me from the tension Blinders to protect me from the faces of men A qu...

My Grandpa guarded the sacred places from whites. He had a badge shaped like an arrowhead. There was a line across the road that stopped trucks. Cars couldn't get there, because the road was too rough. We only stayed in June, July and August because winter guarded the sacred sites the rest of the time. If someone didn't want to listen to my frail old Grandpa, when he told them they couldn't enter, then he let them pass. H...

I sat on the damp concrete steps at the end of the milking pit. I listened to the pneumatic throbbing of the milking machines pulling squirts of white liquid from the black and white cows. The milk filled eight glass bubbles in the pit. There were four cows in stalls on each side, munching contentedly on dusty ground grain. Thick green soupy manure covered the cement walkway. My mom reached for the udder of a white cow. S...

I rode my white mare past where Mary lived. The trailer-house looked like it had been dropped accidentally in front of a gray barn. She came out to the white dirt road to talk to me. Her two little brothers stood in the yard and stared. I never rode past her house again, even though she was my friend at school. It was too weird. Mary was stringy. She was thin like a white string, and had stringy blonde hair. She was my on...

Have you ever had a twisted ankle?Maybe you hurt your wrist? You learned to walk a little different.You learned to reach out with your left. Have you ever had a deep betrayal?Maybe someone stabbed you deep?You learned not to ask questions.You learned to pretend not to see. Even years and years laterafter all the pain and memory are goneThe limp learned to compensate, lingersstrangers wonder why it's there Why is such a sw...

I love laying in my hammock in my back yard in Texas. I watch the fireflies rise like sparks. I listen to the cicadas sing in the trees. It's peaceful, except for those damn boys from Fort Hood, roaring by on their motorcycles, and in their hot rods. They're a bunch of immature punks! I wish I could move away from Fort Hood so I could get some peace and quiet, but it's convenient to roll out of bed and be at work within a...

I was in the backseat of the car, listening to my friends Jack and Nancy talk about the owners of the moorage where Jack docks a house-boat. "...back when Coke-Collins owned the whole moorage." said Jack. I only caught the tail end of what he had said, and only paid attention because Nancy reacted to the nick-name. "Coke? Like CocaCola?" asked Nancy. "No, like Cocaine." said Jack. "Really? This is some moorage history! I...

I am a simple country mouse. Exploring is fun. Walking down unfamiliar roads and trailsfeels wonderful. I like to wade through creeks, and turn over stones to see what bugs are under them. Experiencing new things is what brings happiness to my life. I don’t expect to ever see the Statue of Liberty or the Pietà. I don’t have the money for that kind of exploring, but I can explore those places with my intellect. Sometimes,...

Please, leave me alonePlease, pretend that I'm not hereIt's too much to askCause you must harassAll I want is peaceTo pace behind the mowerTo wash the dishesTo take care of thingsYou look for powerEverything belongs to youYou leave in an hourThen I can breathe againI must leave this placeBefore you sufocate meBefore I hate youTo look for some peace

I worked in Tombstone at Diamond Jim's Olde Tyme Photo Studio dressing people up like saloon girls and cowboys and taking their pictures with a hundred-and-eighty-year-old camera that went POOF and running to the back to dip the sheets of paper from between the glass into a chemical in a little red-lit room and selling the pictures to smiling parents and lovers and bikers and tourists, but someone was stealing from the ti...

To touch a thingis to say without words that it is yoursTo tear the ground apart with your handsis to claim it without deeds and titlesTo remove, or to place a thing in a particular spotis to say it is yours when you aren't there To rip the weeds from the dirtis to remove the natural markersTo plant the fruits of your choosingis to place your stamp of ownership on the groundTo touch something that is not yours is a violat...

I didn't go on the road. In the morning, I stayed back and did chores. I burned manure, did dishes, got fuel for the generator, dumped the used shower water out on the driveway and filled the shower tanks. At night, I pulled extra shifts of guard duty, and four hours of radio watch every night. I averaged six hours of watch a night. In the hot middle of the day I did things like taking parts off broken trucks so that the...

The old man sat up watching the fire, the family, the horses, the stars…if there were nothing to watch he would still be awake. That’s what old men do – stay awake. “Where are you going?” His grandson stopped and pointed into the darkness with his lips. “To steal the Colonel’s horse.” said the boy, with humor in his eyes. The old man blinked slowly. When he opened his eyes his grandson was gone. In the soldier's garden, t...

I had a nice office job on post, Fort Hood, Texas. I lived right outside the air field gate. I had a blue healer named Tito, and I enjoyed taking him for walks. His leash hung from the door handle, and he would push it into the door so the the snap clicked, reminding me. He was a charmer. When it would rain I would try to catch him at the door and wipe his feet so he wouldn't track up the house. He would inevitably get aw...

Doc. Dempsey coiled the ends of his braids and stuffed them in the hip pockets of his dockers. He grabbed his newspaper and go-cup and walked to his jeep. He took a slurp from his go-cup and a glanced at the road before going back to his newspaper. He read a feature about one of the teachers at Two-Eagle-River school. The speedometer was sitting at about 25 mph. The jeep rolled down the Round Butte road, which was used to...