…Do I Sleep in the Bed or in the Drawer?

~ johnbrandall

1 

There are twenty drawers
but only one keyhole

2 

bite guard
rubber band
cough drop

3 

Assorted drawers in maple frames
 stacked on a slant, askant

4 

lint brush
lavender
lip balm

5 

A warp of wood
hitched in a jute strap
fourteen years in the making

6 

night creams
magazines 
and dreams

7 

“The drawers are the sliding parts.”
“What do you call the rest of it?”
“A nightstand”

8

is empty

9 

nail file
paper clip
flashlight

10 

“This one’s locked.”
“There must be a key.”
“Maybe in here—”

Continue with the drawers...

Sestina for a Far-Off Farmhouse

~ johnbrandall

At times I arrive to find somebody
has been there, raided it, trashed the place.  Or water
has tricked the roof, creating interior weather.  
Once the front door dropped a pane, waved in winter.
I had to shoo an upstart family of robins
who cursed me all the way to the creek.

One April I took a bath in the creek,
submerged in a pool, current run along my body.
When I emerged my head was as clear as the robin’s.
Someone said, “You know we turned the water
on?”  I thought of trees dressing after winter
when three deer appeared, rejoicing in the weather.

Continue with poem...

New Orleans Poems, 2019

~ johnbrandall

I. Cemetery Number One

Cold water, one dollar
Crows calling in the 
    cemetery
Book about    water
      Mud underfoot   Ferns
growing out of the walls
     Cackles, protestations
            Free tours

Vaults, sarcophagi 
      biers      Hide and seek
among gravestones
      Marble, cement
          etched names
   A spigot, dry for years
This land, this district...
 
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2018 Playlist

~ johnbrandall

I'm tired and restless. This was that soft-life nightmare-scenario year where both stocks and bonds declined in value. Who was going to see that coming?

It's like how we usually get invited by our friend to add music to a "Best of Year" playlist, which goes on queue at her year-end New Year's Eve bash. Except this year, nothing, no mention of it. She's got the entire musical landscape covered?


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Noise is the Ripping of Time

~ johnbrandall

Dateline Farm, woodsmoke hands, Miles on a Bluetooth speaker.

It's a riff from the Jack Johnson Sessions. It's not one of the better songs on the album but it's not the worst music I've heard today.

That 'reward' goes to the songs I heard coming across 'Orscheln Radio' whilst I searched for all and sundry at the Orscheln Farm and Home in Owensville, MO on my drive out here this afternoon. Folks, this is Hawley Country.

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Fall Farm Party 2018

~ johnbrandall

I.

Dateline Farm.  First tea of the season.  October 11—kind of late for first tea, methinks.  B agrees.  It's Thursday.  She took a sicker.

It's sunny and breezy.  The blue jays make ratchety calls.  All in all the place was in good shape upon our arrival.  The freezer was running strong.  The four trays of ice were cold and full.  I cracked them and filled the owl, part-way.  It amazes me that old freezer works so well.  Even the fridge compartment had a chill to it, which isn't always true.  I was here three weeks ago; left it running in anticipation...



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Andersonville, August 2018

~ johnbrandall

I.  Prologue:  Illinois Itinerants.

Itinerant.  Now there's a good word I don't use, have never used, to my recollection.  It means "passing about a country".  That's the adjective, as in "itinerant laborer" or "itinerant preacher".  But there's also a noun version: "one who travels from place to place".

And I'm thinking this might be fitting for us as we head to Chicago tomorrow, knowing the route I'm looking at taking, off-highway, through all those random little Illinois farm towns, Raymond and Stonington; Blue Mound and Boody; Pontiac and Ransom...



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