POeT SHOTS is a monthly series published on the first Monday of the month. It features work by established writers followed by commentary and insight by Ray Greenblatt
POeT SHOTS #6, Series C
AT THE CORNER OF OIL AND BEEF
Sturgid Motorcycle Rally, Sturgis, South Dakota
More than magenta tattoos that flicker action films of flame-snorting dragons or sea serpents across once muscled chests shoulders forearms more than massive rhinestone
encrusted buckles studding barrel-waisted demons with ersatz Mayan bling their headgear blazes longings to return to a more fabled age Viking helmets
some horned some winged with stripes or lightning bolts golden clasped bandanas starred midnight or blood red silks that might have fringed the brow of Blackbeard or Long John Silver and most
of all the towering broad-brimmed Stetsons mesas on the move their shadows sweeping once-vast plains under wheeled riders’ great horsepowered mounts mythology of man
versus steer as potent as the frescoed bull-leapers on Cretan walls and here on Sturgis Main Street near One- Eyed Jack’s Saloon where curbed Electra Glides and Road Kings
idle under Texas Beef Brisket Deep Fried Sirloin Tips and ribs ribs ribs mingling fumes where no one reckons the sixteen pounds of grain gone up in smoke for each pound
of meat or the ninety tons of antique plant matter hecatombed in every gallon of gas I long to satisfy these cowboys’ longings a million times o-
ver send them back way beyond Minoan rodeos beyond the first taming of cattle the first sowing of grain that fed them beyond the first rooted earthlife
to pirate-free ancient seas beneath the plains before titanic heat gods spirited oil from the micro- scopic remains of floating protoplankton before
each diatom and dinoflagellate burned sunshine to carbon send these steersmen back hands whisked from throttle- grips haunches from hand-tooled leather saddles back beyond
the blinding glitter of their gas-fed longhorns’ chrome flanks in mythic ascension to untracked starry passes where light glides flameless smokeless tinged only with promise
A flood of imagery! From “protoplankton,” “diatom,” dinoflagellate,” to “Texas Beef Brisket Deep Fried Sirloin/Tips.” What do some people want: “longings/to return to a more fabled age.” What does the poet want for them: “Send these steersmen back [...] to untracked starry passes/where light glides flameless smokeless tinged only with promise.”
Ray Greenblatt has been a poet for forty years and an English teacher longer than that. He was an editor of General Eclectic, a board member of the Philadelphia Writers Conference, and is presently on the staff of the Schuylkill Valley Journal. He has won the Full Moon Poetry Contest, the Mad Poets Annual Contest, and twice won the Anthony Byrne Annual Contest for Irish Poetry sponsored by The Irish Edition. His poetry has been translated into Gaelic, Polish, Greek and Japanese.