Three poems

Greg Brownderville

the sip and the saw

dead’s mama hells from the sip
mommer’s mama hells from the saw
it’s hot in this two states
a dog pants and the tongue is ripple
magic carpet can’t get liftoff
stuck in such of a hot wet breath
I youth to wanna ride one
summers high in the joe montanas
let me lap that cool cool aqua
crackling down a mountain brook
this days I wish little
getting by
on my garden
and I’m low on tomatoes
cause elijah the crop dust man
did dropped a double potion down
and shriveled
all my big boys and better boys
the sun killed the rest
a rich curl from the sunburns
laid out nude
and got a little sister blister
kiddos live in water bodies
ditch pond oxbow slough
river saws our land in two
a glass bottle in the junkyard
melts in crazy mazy shape
like kidweird dreams
hellalujah
by the pyre of god I live
close to the far
close to the far

who’s him

he’s in tents
just when you thought
you was all along
out in the dark sticks
there he is
you get gone
to hide in town
but all the sudden
a tex on your fun
says I’m here
it’s a big bit
like a scaremare
he’s a ghost
or else he’s you

butcherbird

other day
we got some ice cream on the square
and mommer had a time
I heard her say to the blue blue day
no soul alive is glad as I’m
we got twice cream
it was joy
all the yum people
laughing up the street
eating treat
but then last night I had a scaremare
we got lost
in the worlderness
mayor’s roadkill
jonk stays drunk in dream and out
I’m all along in our time of woah
I see the bombfire
hear the gunshouts
fifty deads
at the blink of a hat
just this morn I seed a birdtree
devil branches blooming red
dead cardinal heads all over
now my mind goes down my mind
I am lost in the hall of cost

Greg Brownderville

Greg Brownderville

Arkansas poet Greg Alan Brownderville is a full professor in the Department of English at Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas, Texas, and is editor-in-chief of the Southwest Review. His first book was Deep Down in the Delta: Folktales and Poems (2005). A revised and illustrated edition was published in 2012. The material for this book was gathered around the county where he grew up and includes folktales, descriptions of local traditions, and oral histories presented in both poetry and prose. Brownderville has won numerous awards for his poetry, including the Porter Prize (2007), the Jane Geske Award from Prairie Schooner (2010), the Voice Only Poetry Prize from the Missouri Review (2011), and a poetry award from New Millennium Writings (2011); in addition, he received the Walter E. Dakin Fellowship from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference (2012), made the Bestseller List of the Poetry Foundation (2012), and saw his work listed among the “Top Picks” of the Library Journal (2012). Brownderville published a second book of poetry, Gust, in 2011, and his third book, A Horse with Holes in It, was published in 2016. He is also a songwriter and the lead singer of the band Beekeeper Spaceman, whose self-titled debut album was released in the spring of 2023. He collaborated with Jacob Cooper on the piece Ripple in the Sky, which premiered with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in 2016 and was released by New Amsterdam Records in 2020. In 2021, he created a so-called go-show called Fire Bones, an online narrative series including short films, podcasts, songs, poems, visual art, and more. In 2026, he was named writer-in-residence for the Hemingway-Pfeifer Museum and Education Center.

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