“If you look really hard, you can probably find some of these fine St. Louis poets any given Saturday night in the downstairs used book section at Left Bank Books, in the upstairs art gallery at Subterranean Books, or in someone’s basement with a case of Schlafly and half a dozen friends who hate poetry, but they’re none of them plotting their escapes any time soon.”
Here’s a poem by Richard Newman called Heartland Haiku”:
Heartland Haiku
In 1970, when then-president Richard Nixon returned from China, he brought back home more than just a press secretary recovering from appendicitis . . . the youth culture of the day absorbed Eastern Philosophy faster than McDonald’s cheeseburgers. . . .
—from the internet site heartlandhealing.com
spring
Cadillac cuts through
satin wheat field, JUST DIVORCED
soaped on back windshield.
summer
Black roofs lick the sun
like an orange sucker. Hurry—
mow, motherfucker!
fall
Dirty magazines
curl under dead leaves, hot pink
pages burning red.
winter
Sandwich wrappers—whoosh!—
whip across the parking lot,
bloom in the bare bush.
charlesjensenwriter.com 