The Monster of Donna Lake

From The Seed: Stories from the River’s Edge (Absey & Co., 2011) News of the latest deaths spread like wildfire throughout the student body of W.A. Todd Ninth-Grade Campus. Text messages were forwarded frantically; beneath desks, hundreds of fingers flailed away at diminutive keys, while misty eyes risked casual glances…

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Where Songs Begin

From my volume of Mesoamerican verse, Flower, Song, Dance: Aztec and Mayan Poetry (Lamar University Press 2013). This poem is the first in a collection of Nahuatl songs known as the “Cantares Mexicanos” or Songs of Mexico written down by indigenous scholars in the 16th century. The original title of…

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Ode 1.5 (Horace)

Ode 1.5 What slender boy bathed in a flowing smell Courts you, Pyrrha, on roses Within some pleasant cave? Whom do you braid that golden hair for, Simple and neat? Ah, how often He’ll weep at how faith and gods change, And he’ll marvel, unaccustomed, At this rough sea that’s…

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XLII (Catullus)

Here’s a put-down poem by one of my favorites, Catullus, one of a group of young Roman poets who revolutionized poetry in the 1st century BCE: XLII Come, Hendecasyllables, come one and all, From everywhere, as many as you may be, For an ugly, skanky slut thinks I’m a joke…

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The Fall of Bagdad

The Fall of Bagdad[1] Don Pedro wakes this autumn day, Descends the stairs to his bar, And wiping down the rough-hewn wood, Prepares to pour the drinks. For years his cantina thrived on gold That cotton transport culled From slaves that Texas cruelly worked Throughout the Civil War. In fact,…

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