Permian Basin Blues

The sky's the color of my old blue jeans,
and the land is pulled tight by drought.
All the fields are perfectly smooth,
planed and drawn and quartered
by old farmers and good ol' boys
in their diesel-smoking tractors,
and everything is boxed off
into barbed-wire squares.

(The rest of this poem is available in Sparks and Shadows.)


(This poem originally published in Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, Issue #7, October 2000. Portions also appeared in In Silent Graves by Gary A. Braunbeck.)