1953 Wellington Wheat Festival by Myrne Roe

August’s void of evening breezes

capped a small park gorged with crowds.

Ride lights were glimmering circles,

teasing children with no tickets.

I envied friends certain of their beauty,

practiced in promoting romance.

A dreamer unsure of her dreams,

shy as a colt, afraid of my yearnings,

I pretended apathy toward the boy,

eyes smiling, who stood before me,

Today memory comes in cloud wisps,

but long ago under a luminous sky,

I clearly recall the handsome boy

who held my hand and walked me home.

I still smell the oil in his hair,

and hear the band play “Tenderly.”

~ Myrne Roe

Myrne Roe is a retired editorial writer and syndicated columnist who has been writing poetry for fifteen years. Her poems have been published in local and regional publications including ByLine Magazine, Voices of the Heartland, Words Out of the Flatlands and Kansas Voices. She also has published a chapbook, Ironing Out the Wrinkles

Guest editor: Denise Low, 2^nd Kansas Poet Laureate, is author of twenty-five books, most recently Mélange Block (Red Mountain Press, Santa Fe). Low is past president of the Associated Writers and Writing Programs board of directors. Cream City Review nominated her fiction for a Pushcart Prize, 2014. She writes articles, blogs, and reviews; and she co-publishes a small press, Mammoth Publications. She teaches private professional workshops as well as classes for Baker U. Her MFA is from W.S.U. and Ph.D. is from K.U. She has British Isles, German, and Delaware Indian heritage. See more: www.deniselow.net http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/denise-low http://deniselow.blogspot.com

Advertisement

Winter’s Truths by Myrne Roe

Windows closed to snow

revealed a fox curled on pale ground,

full tail draped around,

pointed nose resting on paws

and brazen jet eyes staring at me.

 

He stretched and stood, loped away

to search, I’d guess, for a rodent

munching on grain spilled in the barn,

a rabbit blending with a snow knoll,

or an old hen near scrub oaks

pecking dense ice in a water bowl.

 

Tea and a down comforter

divorced me from the view

to consider swirling winds that dispense

chance between weak and strong.

Did not Nature devise

forever discord between the two?

For the sake of peace, I’d choose

equality which, I know, is as unlikely

as the old hen breaking the ice.

 

The fox has left, his dinner surely done,

my fitful musings of justice over,

I slowly succumb to a winter doze.

I hope, as my breath slows,

the fox’s meal was a larcenous rat.

~ Myrne Roe

Bio: I am a retired editorial writer and syndicated columnist who has been writing poetry for fifteen years. My poems have been published in local and regional publications including ByLine Magazine, Voices of the Heartland, Words Out of the Flatlands and Kansas Voices. I have also published a chapbook, Ironing Out the Wrinkles

myrne@cox.net

Guest editor Eric McHenry’s new book of poems, Odd Evening, will be published by Waywiser Press in 2016. His previous collections include Potscrubber Lullabies, which won the Kate Tufts Discovery Award in 2007, and Mommy Daddy Evan Sage, a children’s book illustrated by Nicholas Garland. He also edited and introduced Peggy of the Flint Hills, a memoir by Zula Bennington Greene. His poems have appeared in The New Republic, Yale Review, Cincinnati Review, Field, Orion, The Guardian (U.K.), Poetry Daily and Poetry Northwest, from whom he received the 2010 Theodore Roethke Prize. Since 2001, he has been a poetry critic for The New York Times Book Review. He lives in Lawrence with his wife and two children and teaches creative writing at Washburn University.

Udall, Kansas by Myrne Roe

                                May 25, 1955

The man uneasy left their bed.

His wife sleeping on her back

hands crossed at her neck clutching

a linen sheet as if it might escape.

Air hot and cold weighed heavy

on his chest, stole his breath.

At ten thirty he checked t.v. and radio,

got static for his efforts.

A calico paced up and down stairs,

mewling as if calling lost kittens.

The man and cat were students of storms,

big and not, sent each spring to Kansas.

He couldn’t see out the kitchen door

unless lightening zigged and zagged,

threw bolts that made shadows

of the grain elevator and water tower.

A train whistle blew and blew.

The man feared the engineer

meant a warning because he saw evil drop,

churn earth into debris as it charged toward town.

The news at ten issued all clear

so he had assumed only a thunderstorm.

Now he thought he’d better call his wife,

secure them both beneath the kitchen table.

By then it was ten thirty-five

and the most powerful Kansas tornado ever,

bore down on Udall with whirling, roaring

homicidal winds bent on fostering hell.

Dawn covered the awful result with pale light.

Silence wandered like a ghost

amid uprooted trees planted a hundred years ago,

houses without roofs and doors,

a telephone pole piercing the side of a church,

broken glass filling a bathtub.

Rescuers found death and affliction

in rooms without walls, flattened cars,

fields stripped of crops. flooded spaces.

The calico cat hid under a rain-soaked sofa.

No one found the man or his wife,

their house cleaved into splinters.

Reporters and cameramen hastened into the town

to find their story. Amid the ruins

one of them wrote,  “The little town of Udall

died in its sleep last night.”

Myrne Roe write, “I am a retired editorial writer and syndicated columnist who has been writing poetry for fifteen years. My poems have been published in local and regional publications including ByLine Magazine, Voices of the Heartland, Words Out of the Flatlands and Kansas Voices. I have also published a chapbook, Ironing Out the Wrinkles.” myrne@cox.net

Guest Editor Diane Wahto has an MFA in creative writing from Wichita State University. Her poem, “Someone Is Always Watching,” won the American Academy of Poets award. Recently, her poems “The Conspiracy of Coffee” and “After the Storm” were published in Active Aging. She, her husband, and two dogs live in Wichita, Kansas. dwahto@cox.net