Front Porch Journal

Stacy Kidd

Do not hear me now

with whatever rock
I remember from Subiaco--

the monks who taught
through high winds

at Easter, the box
trees or dahlias in bloom

before the last frost.
Do not say Josephine,

French empress,
only favored the flowers

when they were hers
alone to give-- or hear her

ministers tell the Polish prince
to steal a hundred

seeds-- or answer with
your own loose stone

from the monastery's grave,
but unsing: clover

on Maple Street. Say nothing.

Black-Eyed Dog

The mongrel dog can't recall the road
to the farmhouse. A bale of hay
or tally of bees under the maple-- each an oval.
Each night, another Shoeless Joe
mutters a curse & the ground
grows over with nettles. Second sight is
a grass-blade under the tongue. Love,
how to prove the flowers don't belong here.

& little towns grow like this--

a gravel road curves into rocks where we wanted
to live & could not

or we would have lit
right up, the backroad

as long as our legs
could carry us
                                                                  & enough
to see the night                                       sky

blaze & ball
change into everything         is whittled

that eats what takes                                                wood & no good
root around us                             & nbsp;          I keep you to fall
                             &nb sp;                                                           &nb sp;
                             &nb sp;                                                     right into place

Feathers

grouped in gray

and black
striations,

hint

of blue both

and red--
the Cimarron's water.

I want

to see things

as they are

now: a house filled

with books,

a room with books,

a room--

white

walls, crevice.

Stacy Kidd is poetry editor for Quarterly West and a PhD student in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Utah. Her poems have appeared recently in The Journal, No Tell Motel, Washington Square, and WITNESS, and are forthcoming in reviews Colorado and Iowa.

"I grew up with a front stoop on Jefferson Street. The neighbors would pull out lawn chairs and sit down for a long time in the driveway across from my house and drink beer and smoke cigarettes anytime the tornado sirens sounded. When there was a tornado, my parents would stash me in the crawl space underneath my bedroom. They came, too, with a radio and a blanket, and I could see the neighbors' feet through a vent in the foundation.

This was Stillwater, and there was a back stoop and a bird dog named Buck after Buck Rogers and maybe Buck Owens. The back stoop was also a good stoop. If you stood on it long enough and twisted your head the right way, you could sort of see Boomer Lake.

My grandfather's stoop was covered and looked over his farm which was basically a barn and an old outhouse and some cotton crops and pasture. There was a great little cellar next to it with jars of pickles and chow chow, which I never learned to like. The cellar had a dirt floor and a table my grandfather dragged down there so I could play with dolls and teapots and the toy rifle my cousin passed on to me, etc.

Grandfather #2 had a house outside Altus with a front porch and a lot of trees, but I don't really remember it. He moved into an apartment by the Air Force Base when I was still small and ran a domino hall with other old farmers. They bet with matchsticks."

Masthead

Executive Editor
Tom Grimes

Managing Editor
Chris Margrave

Fiction Editor
Julia Eddington

Poetry Editor
James Knippen

Nonfiction Editor
Jaime Netzer

Book Review Editor
Luisa Muradyan

Interview Editor
Emily Davis Watson

Copy Editor
Shiloh Booker

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Readers
Brett Bisceglia
Ross Feeler
Jana Fornario
John Fry
Ali Haider
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Faylita Hicks
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Monet Moutrie
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Richard Robertson
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Michael Rosenbaum
Richard Santos
Mary Selph
Shawnacy McArthur
Kelsey Shipman
Dana Sprayberry
Martha Stallman
Joe Vastano

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Roger Jones

Founding Editors
Michael Hart
Evelyn Lauer
Josh Magnuson
Toby Peterson
Michael Wolfe

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Ben Engel
Evelyn Lauer
Herpreet Singh

ISSN#1936-7716