Cowboy Dreams
Travel through time to the fabled American West, with ‘Ghost Town’ by Glenn Pape, second runner-up for the 2017 Magpie Award for Poetry.
Final judge Renée Sarojini Saklikar told us, “Here we have rhyme at the service of both rhythm and longing: the simple line breaks work very well and surprise us with unexpected turns. Precise verbs, precision images, great cadence. This one I’m gonna carry in my pocket.“
Enjoy the opening stanzas, excerpted here from Issue 16, Autumn 2017, on sale now until October 31st.
Ghost Town
by Glenn Pape
All the stars are silver spurs
the cowboy dreams at night.
And the moon’s the hole from an ounce of lead,
right between the eyes.
Night falls hard in the American West.
When the yarn begins unravelling
before it’s even spun,
and the hanging tree is waiting,
for the posse to come,
the ghost town rises like a coyote’s howl.
I swing down off the saddle
and take a minute to remember what it’s like
when boots pound down on solid ground.
The smell of sage blows in from the past.
What are you digging for, you dirt-blind miner?
Is that my mama looking worried
by the window of the general store?
Is that my papa squinting up at the sun?
Let it go.
The legend is always much greater than the truth.
To read more, order your copy of Issue 16, Autumn 2017, ON SALE now!
Poets, for your chance to appear in the magazine — and win $300! — enter the Kingfisher Poetry Prize, open now!
Glenn Pape is working on aging gracefully in his old house on a cul-de-sac in Portland, Oregon. Although captivated by reading and writing poetry since childhood, he only began submitting his work upon reaching his mid-fifties. He has been published in The North American Review, The Sun, Poet Lore, and The Rhysling Anthology for science fiction, horror, and fantasy poetry, among other journals.
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