SATURDAY'S POEM

ANIMALS
by Jim Reese

There are thirty-seven stuffed animals
mounted on these walls.
Five-by-fives and buckskins
over beer taps and booze.
There are roosters on the run.
Two wide-eyed coyotes
stopped in mid dance—a full-breasted turkey
fanning itself. There’s a large shadow box full
of forty-pounds of Missouri catfish
hooked on a stringer and polished
with polyurethane.

Leaning on the bar and swiveling
on round stools are men in camouflage
and Carhartt coveralls,
all of them this evening immortalized
amongst wildlife and fowl.

It’s been dark outside
for at least four hours, but in here
life illuminates. Hear the cackle and howl
carry down Main Street, echoing
call after call.

In one corner listen as Harold Tahatchenbach,
blinder than a coon in headlights,
bends the truth. Everyone here knows he likely
put more bullets in the sky today
than the lot of us.

See Linus Cummins
prance around with antlers
on his head. This year’s trophy a suck and buck
proudly worn for all to see.

Jerimiah Kniplemeyer, with one eye cocked,
will sit at the corner of the bar regurgitating
how he let that one get away.

All of these bullets and BB’s, beers and bowls.
All of this bullshitting,
for big game, bragging rites and blast.

Jim Reese is a writer, photographer, and editor who grew up in Omaha, Nebraska. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in creative writing from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where he teaches in the English department and works on the editorial staff of the Prairie Schooner. He is cofounder of and imagining editor for Logan House Press. Reese's work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies: New York Quarterly, South Dakota Review, Nebraska Life, Nebraska Territory, Morpo Review, Touchstone (Kansas State University), Plains Song Review, Platte Valley Review, Poetry Motel, and others. Reese's chapbooks include; As Worthless as Tits on a Boar (Cacthouse Press, 1995), Wedding Cake and Funeral Ham (Grizzly Press, 2002) and his most recent collection of creative non-fiction, The Jive (Morpo Press, 2004). Reese's first full-length collection of poetry, These Trespasses, is forthcoming from The Backwaters Press in summer, 2005 (see: http://www.thebackwaterspress.homestead.com/ ). Reese can be reached at: 1625 Pawnee Street Lincoln NE 68502; phone 402-420-5226; email loganhousepress@alltel.net .

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A NOTE TO THE POETS OUT THERE
I'm interested in considering your "poems of place" for publication in The Middlewesterner's "Saturday's Poem" feature; send two or three of your best in the body of an e-mail addressed to tmmontag@dotnet.com . Put "Saturday's Poem" in the subject line. Then be patient. I will get back to you about whether I'll use your work or not. Send along a short biographical note and information about where your books can be purchased and I'll include that when your poem runs. There's no payment involved for having your work appear in "Saturday's Poem," but the feature is seen by some few high class readers. Click here for complete index of and access to "Saturday's Poems" poems published prior to September 18, 2004.

Comments

[Peter]

Love this poem. The cackle and call, the animals at the bar as strangely frozen and immortalized as the animals above it.

Good eye, good eye. Tom, you have an excellent eye.

[Tom Montag]

Thank you, Peter. Jim Reese makes it easy to find a good poem.

[suzanne]

Jim Reese knows good names
when he sees/hears 'em
as well

[suzanne]

or makes them up
as the case may be