Plainsongs 40.2 (Summer 2020)

Plainsongs' title suggests not only its location on the Great Plains, but also its preference for the living language, whether in free or formal verse. Published twice a year by Hastings College Press in Hastings, Nebraska, Plainsongs presents poems that seem to be aware of modernist and post-modernist

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hastings College Press
• Release date: Jul 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781942885818

Book preview

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Contents

Elegy for Who I Once Was

Joshua Michael Stewart

About Elegy for Who I Once Was:

A Plainsongs Award Poem

Eleanor Reeds

The Widening Gyre

Mike Frenkel

About The Widening Gyre:

A Plainsongs Award Poem

Michael Catherwood

Coal Delivery Day, 1950

Elizabeth Stoessl

About Coal Delivery Day, 1950:

A Plainsongs Award Poem

Becky Faber

The Forgotten War

John Struloeff

Golem

Mary Ann Dimand

Cultural Confusions

Kieran Egan

Stowaway

Devon Balwit

Grasslands

Bonnie Larson Staiger

Keys

Shannon K. Winston

Eve Reflects

Cecilia Gigliotti

Storm Flow

Robert Lee Kendrick

Dirty Laundry

Megan Savage

The Lament of the First Chinese Brother

Lisa Shirley

A Martini Over a Stone Floor

Adela Najarro

The Map of the States

Barbara Daniels

Leaving the Concert Hall

Sean Lause

Andromeda

Holly Day

Requiem, Father

C. E. Greer

100 Blessings

Alan Toltzis

Unknown Elegy

Will Simescu

Moths

C.M. Barnes

Taking Down the Clothes

Anne Knowles

Our Daughter in Darkness

Cecil Morris

Circle Dance

Lin Marshall Brummels

The Fundamentals

John Zedolik

Dirt Time

Robert Rothman

How Much Does the Anne Frank House Cost?

Sharon Kennedy-Nolle

Hoax

Donna Pucciani

Palmyra, Illinois

Jared M. Campbell

tortoise

Genevieve Hartman

The White Season

Miguel Eichelberger

For Samuel Morse

Mark Christhilf

Self-portrait with Memory

Marjorie Maddox

Hailstorm Disquiet

Marilyn Dorf

White Buffalo Woman

Wyle McClain

They Say of Rain

Chet Corey

Forecast

Francine Rubin

Ghost Leg

Joseph Hardy

History Lessons

Christopher Snook

Friends

Mark Metcalf

LIFE and Ruby Bridges

Calida Osti

Acroyoga

Janis Harrington

Open

Rachel Tramonte

Sun Salutation

Kara Mae Brown

Poem for the Dog Jaya

John Krumberger

The New Particle

Todd Johnson

Water Ceremony

Michael Phillips

Staggering Bees

Yvonne Higgins Leach

Is Pluto Still a Planet?

Joan Colby

Abattoir

Marc Meierkort

Battle of Los Angeles, 2006

Eric Kennedy

The Definition

Jayne Warren

Sediment Remains

Samn Stockwell

Footfall

Christopher Goedert

Lesson Learned

Patricia L. Hamilton

Hope

Margo L. Foreman

Opportunity

Maria Anderson Knudtson

Sourgrass and Tadpoles

Robert Parham

My maiden aunts

Ed Block

Stocking Shelves at Hills Supermarket—1974

Geo. Staley

Cashier Strays from Register

Dave Malone

Sometime After My Father Died

Tate Lewis

In the Air

Naomi Ruth Lowinsky

Secrets

Carol Bason

Nothing

Robert Cooperman

Just a Bite

Lilian Bodley

Our City

Steven Ray Smith

Northern Ringneck

Ace Boggess

Childhood Enrichment

Charlene Neely

Holly, Who Works Overnights at the Kwik Shop

Cathy Porter

The Attic

Krikor N. Der Hohannesian

Beginning

Katherine Fallon

Blue Dress Wearing a Small Girl

Karisma J. Tobin

No True Dark

Caitlin Thomson

Summer Haibun

Andrena Zawinski

Early Friday I Wondered, Suddenly, Was Cab Calloway Living, Was He Dead

Lyn Lifshin

Who’s Who

John Grey

Even Out Back, I’d Travel with a Trowel

Christine Butterworth-McDermott

For Mary Oliver

Sasha Blakeley

New Roots

Karen Poppy

What She Knows

Princess Zuri’ McCann

Lingering

Julia Horensten

Unwritten

Danielle Valverde

A Monologue of a Theater Teacher

Sujash Purna

The Problem with Water

B. Neal Kirchner

Some Things I’ve Not Done

Florence Weinberger

Almost August

Michael Lyle

Comfort at the Muzzleloader Café, Billings, Montana

Linda Conroy

I Ask My Realtor How to Keep the Ghosts the Same

Megan Mary Moore

Cradle of Moss

Kathrine M. Cays

My Foolish Heart

Abigail Warren

Survey

Jonce Marshall Palmer

Pink Wheat

Anna Ciummo

I Wish I Had Batman’s Origin Story

Keli Lindsey

Richard’s Story

Matthew J. Spireng

Buzz

Mary Ann Meade

Notes from the Editor

So much has happened since our last issue. The emergence (and potential reemergence) of a deadly pandemic. Widespread job loss and economic hardship. Hundreds of thousands of people in the streets, protesting racial injustice. We are living in tumultuous, dizzying, despairing times. We mourn the Black lives that have been senselessly snuffed out: those of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, James Scurlock, Rayshard Brooks, and so many others. We watch helplessly as severe coronavirus infections disproportionately befall the nonwhite, the elderly, and the disadvantaged. In the face of governmental inaction, we worry about our collective future on a perpetually warming planet. We are angry. We feel hollowed out. We long for change. Perhaps we are on the cusp of it. As we Zoom with loved ones and keep a safe distance from one another in grocery stores, peering suspiciously over the avocados at the unmasked among us, we search for signs—any signs—of hope. There have been glimmers. A historic Supreme Court decision confirming workplace protections for LGBTQ+ individuals. Another blocking the administration’s attempt to end support for DACA recipients. An announcement by the NFL reversing its opposition to players’ kneeling in protest of tragic police killings of Black people. We cling to hope wherever we can find it: in sports, in avocados, in poetry.

If not sports or avocados, we can at least