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A - D ... Kansas Poems
Alphabetically sectioned by poem title
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  • A, B, C, D   |   E, F, G, H   |   I, J, K, L   |   M, N, O, P, Q  |   R, S, T, U, V   |   W, X, Y, Z
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A View
  • A Kansan Visits NYC  -- Ortolani, Al
  • Almanac -- Fleury, Amy
  • An Expatriate Kansan Rides...  -- Reynolds, Tom
  • As Winter Sneaks...Prairie -- Browne, Kathryn
B View
  • ​Between...Mo & the Kaw? -- Patterson, William
  • Bird Song --Torrez, RosemaryParsons 
  • Bluestem Breeze -- King, Phillip Alberet
  • Break-up of my Landscape -- Dickson, Chandra
C​ View
  • Cottonwood -- by Cory, Robert 
  • Counting Stars --by Ortolani-Tavernaro, Jennifer 
D View
  • Deserted Farm -- Townley, Roderick

A

Almanac
by Amy Fleury

There is a physics to burnt toast and tenderness--
 a law proven in a kitchen south of a certain town.
Here she scrapes black crumbs in washboard rhythm
for the old man choked with bacon grease
and egg yolk who sits at her table.
Brush of silver whiskers, he leaves,
carrying his body like a sack of feed.
Baked bread and bleach claim this place
where she sits to husk and churn--
each day an adage.

In town, her girdle binds as she markets
for flour and spools of thread.
Weather talks barometric pressure,
rain gauge banter.
Straw purse clasped, she winds home
to the bud and shed, vine and prune.
He is there, driving
the John Deere in wide circles.
And sure as the moon will wax and wane,
the old man pats her bottom,
sits at her table as she ladles stew.
 
Read More Poems by ► Amy Fleury (PDF)
An Expatriate Kansan
​Rides the Train of Remembering

by Tom Reynolds
 
My trip into the vanished past
is prodded by springs in my seat,
cracked vinyl scraping an elbow,
and thirst for water, not truth.
 
This train ain’t bound for glory,
just a slow sixty miles down country,
through thickets and shorn fields,
weaving on unsafe tracks.
 
Today’s train ain’t no showpiece,
just an engine and three rusted cars,
soot seeping through cracks,
till I wonder what I was thinking
 
traveling into Kansas this way,
my life there on that Oswego farm
surrounded by woods and trees,
the slow trickle of a muddy creek,
 
crags below the wooden bridge,
a black hawk circling the hedge,
the farmhouse beyond the hill,
and despite all, enduring love.
 
I should have gone first class
As Winter Sneaks Over The Prairie  
by Kathryn Browne

 
Strings of waterfowl
throw themselves at the sky --
congregations whipped to a frenzied flight.
 
Borne on a bitter wind
their urgent calls, like prayers in the night 
whisper through cracks to pierce the dogs’ dreams.
 
Off the water a great flurry of wings rises
shots snap through electric air;
flakes of first snow dance with feathers as they fall.
A Kansan Visits New York City
By Al Ortolani
 
When the neighbor’s dog
barks in the rain
at the wind
in the vines of honeysuckle,
you remember the crowd
rippling down Mulberry Street
into Chinatown.
Like leaves on a fence row
they interconnect
and lace
into a rope of green,
an occasional blossom
 
lifting from the braid.
 
Previously published in
The Little Balkan's Review
 
Read More Poems by ► Al Ortolani  (PDF) 

B

Bird Song
by Rosemary Parsons Torrez
 
The meadowlark trills a Kansas call
Blending its early morning song
Hidden - where grasses still stand tall
Sun rises quickly - with early dawn
 
Blending its early morning song
The plump - breasted robins arrive
Sunrises quickly - with early dawn
Summer sweeps in - warm and alive
 
The plump - breasted robins arrive
Raucous dominate blue jays have joined in
Summer sweeps in - warm and alive
Twittering always - tiny brown wren
 
Raucous dominate blue jays have joined in
Dove coos softly to loving mate
Twittering always - tiny brown wren
Whippoorwill mourns as the day grows late
 
Dove coos softly to loving mate
From the timber - the crow's harsh caw
Whippoorwill mourns as the day grows late
The meadowlark trills a Kansas call
​
Bluestem Breeze
by Phillip Albert King

 
Waltzing through  Kansas bluestem,
Sings a somber prairie wind
Calling to the Meadowlark,
On the thisle in the glen,
Russling the cottonwoods,
That wander a round the bend,
Gliding past clear streams and ponds,
Below a twittering wren,
Whispering to the rimrock,
Far beyond the valley's end,
Pausing for just a moment,
On the shoulders of my friend,
Wrestling with some rusty wire,
Of fences he needs to mend.
 
Between the Mo & the Kaw
by William Patterson
 
 From Atchison's north in darkness
 bundled from night-cold
 & not recovered from sleep
 I am hardly at the wheel
 
 sliding past landmarks
 scarcely visible in early dim
 old farm oak reminds me
 to be mindful of path.
 
 I bend west in time
 before making my first full swerve
 south
 for half an hour.
 
 Then, stopping at a cross-
 roads
 in all directions,
 I bear, finally, east
 
 my last straight course
 before two more bends
 south again &
 a river crossing.
 
 Some days I meet the sun
 over the eastern bluff
 just a mile south of Lawrence,
 yesterday it rose above the Kaw.
 
 Today, I beat it up,
 my chest pounding from cold,
 exiting my car, reflecting
 all the impossible promises a working day.
 
 When it is done,
 I will climb back in for the return:
 same path: new direction
 over the same river still going.
 
 The sun will close behind me
 & a light in a small house
 on a small hill will welcome me
 home.
​Break-up of my Landscape
by Chandra E.A. Dickson 

 
On a sudden awkward drive away from Wichita to Boulder, you point out that I am Midwestern; a Kansas landscape puzzle without the pieces in the middle that form the interesting part of the picture: the center of the bison’s eye, the wildflowers whose names I do not know, the rocky tips of the Flint Hills. I worry about the longest drought in twenty years, the out-of-control grass fires that crept across the state line from Oklahoma, spreading across the fields into Harvey, Burton …
 
How the plains of my life would look charred black--
 
How one grain of wheat feels in my hand and the strength it takes to hike Mt. Sunflower at dawn; to look out and see the crest of the Rockies and know that was as far west as we’d go. Understanding this landscape as home.

C

Counting Stars
by Jennifer Ortolani-Tavernaro

 
Summer stretched out on the hood of my car
Like a cat during a winter’s nap
The warmth comforting
Even in the July heat.
Out on a dirt road
Just me and the boy.
We counted stars and talked of constellations
The sky held a thousand secrets
The World a million possibilities
Our hearts kept time with the locust’s song
As we spun our way through adolescence
In a small Kansas town.
​Cottonwood
by Robert Cory

 
Amid an unspoiled tract of CRP, at the bend of a creek,
a solitary stand of cottonwoods thrives.
Stubbornly rooted in tranquil, unkempt ground.
Those nearest the bank, lean.
Most others upright, cast against an autumn sky.
Like a scatter of polite applause,
the youthful mime the twitch and rustle of the elders.
 
Their first shed leaves adrift.
Yellowing, nonplussed shapes savor the flight;
their once in a lifetime ride.
The fallen form a misshapen mattress for the falling
till wind shuttles them elsewhere.
The creek bed warehouses the lion’s share.
Barren branches part sunlight into oblong wedges.
 
The north faces of their trunks bear winter’s brunt.
Enduring brute forces. They resist the siege.
Indigenous visitors search for something that matters.
Late night calls of a coyote add weight to the dark.
The meek, the bold, the vigilant; hunter and hunted;
all roam unseen whether stars, moon,
sun, cloud, snow, or pricks of freezing rain.
 
As patrons of St. Oestrus instinctively stir,
March arrives; bearing a trove of miracles, caprice
and swagger. Welcome! ...nascent hues of native flora;
the pride of a rain flush creek.
Listen! ...to the vernacular of a hundred small voices.
Soon all will give thanks for April.
Quickening the gait to redemption. 

D

The Deserted Farm
by Roderick Townley
 
Who leaned the broken mirror
against the barn
knew more than he let on
about the mis-
behavior of moonlight.
 
Years now since men
left the fields to the luck of foxes,
and left the locks
to rust on unhinged doors.
 
Still this last artifice,
this final point of order,
the glass tilted
to survey a weather vane,
the tops of sycamores,
 
and doubled heaven hung
with chandeliers.
​
(Finalist, Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards)
Read More Poems by ► Roderick Townley  (PDF) 
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  • Home
    • Site Map
  • Kansas Poets
    • Kansas Poet Laureates >
      • 8 - Traci Brimhall
      • 7 - Huascar Medina
      • 6 - Kevin Rabas
      • 5 - Eric McHenry
      • 4 - Wyatt Townley
      • 3 - C. Mirriam-Goldberg
      • 2 - Denise Low
      • 1 - Jonathan Holden
    • Notable Kansas Poets
    • Ad Astra Project
    • Shoptalk >
      • A. Flurey - Shoptalk
      • G. German - Shoptalk
      • S. Hind - Shoptalk
      • D. Low - Shoptalk
      • S. Meats - Shoptalk
  • Kansas Poems
    • Kansas Poems
    • KS Poems - A, B, C, D
    • KS Poems - E, F, G, H
    • KS Poems - I, J, K, L
    • KS Poems - M, N, O, P, Q
    • KS Poems - R, S, T, U, V
    • KS Poems - W, X, Y, Z
  • Writing Poetry
    • Getting Started
    • Poetry Lesson Plans
  • Links and Groups