Title
 

Author
 

Roxie Margaret Mouths the Words

M. Lee Alexander

if water could bleed

W. Jude Aher

Seeing the Flowers on Horseback

Lynn Veach Sadler

Contest finalists

Roxie Margaret Mouths the Words

“I was born where prairie and horizon meet!” said my mother,
Kansas bred. “They came out to the fields to tell my great uncles
It’s a girl, they said what’d they name her? Roxie Margaret?
That’s a horse’s name!” They sang her to sleep with a counting song:
I’ll sing you 4-O, green grow the rushes-O, What is your 4-O, 4 for the Gospel makers...

Her deputy-sheriff father shot when she was eleven, At his funeral they paraded
the tartan and bagpipes. When my mother, the only child, stood tall and sang out
Land of my high endeavor, Land of the shining river, Land of my heart forever,
Scotland the Brave! Her mother said “Hush, Roxie Margaret, everyone can hear you!”

Farmed out as the poor cousin while her mother sought work in Topeka,
She rode the milk cow while the children of the manor jumped their ponies.
Undaunted by the sharp spine of the cow, she took wild rides
through deep and waving prairie grasses taller than her head, singing
I’ll sing you 3-O, green grow the rushes-O, What is your 3-O? Three, three the rivals...

At the Osage County Fair my mother’s class sang for the mayor: right before
they sang her favorite song, “Beulah Land,” her teacher said, “Roxie
Margaret, you just mouth the words.” She went behind the tent as her cousins
sneered “Roxie Margaret mouths the words!” Ripped field grass from the
earth and sobbed

“Some day God give me a daughter I can sing with! I’ll never tell her not to
sing.” My mother told that story every time we sang folksongs in the car,
hymns in church, scat along with Ella Fitzgerald records, the school anthem
at the college where we both taught. She said “I’m like Garrison Keillor’s
mother, I like it when you sing with me.”

I’ll sing you 2-O, green grow the rushes-O, What is your 2-O?
2, 2, the lily-white boys, clothed all in green-O...

Before the surgeons wheel you into the theater to face that final operation
(not even a Kansan constitution lasts forever), to build your courage we sing
“There once was a union maid, who never was afraid, She jumped on the table just as
quick as she was able, And this is what she said, Oh you can’t scare me!

But the operation doesn’t go well. When they tell me you won’t be coming home
I bring prairie grasses to the hospice room. The doctors yell “Get those weeds out
of here!” and toss dried Queen Anne’s Lace and Milkweed to the bin —
you say never mind, the prairie grows inside me now.

I’ll sing you 1-O, green grow the rushes-O, What is your 1-O? One is one and all alone
And ever more shall be so...

Finally when it’s time you look up at me and mouth your final words.
Quoting your much-loved Jackie Gleason you squeeze my hand and say:
“A little traveling music, please.” So as they do the disconnect, I sing for both of us:

“I’ve got a home in Beulah Land and you’ve got one too, I’ve got a home in Beulah Land
and you’ve got one too. I’ve got a home in Beulah Land and you’ve got one too,
Look away beyond the blue—horizon...

if water could bleed

do you hear the silence
as you walk
alone
deep in the night
where
street-lamp shadows
whisper
and truth
wanders without a name
do you dance
in the sand
upon the imprints
of the hands of children
now lost in time
do you dare
to believe
in what you see
and chance
the echoes of tomorrow
would you
drink your life
once again
before you die,
knowing that your
water could bleed
into the sea.

Seeing the Flowers on Horseback

In China, Hong Kong is
not the only minion restive:
      Building boom proclaimed.
      The scaffolding? All bamboo.
      Who’s bamboozling whom?

In China, detritus of Living-Crowded blossoms:
      Red, hot mobs at march.
      You can’t get out of the way.
      You lose pace—and face.

In China, life, with food and craft stands,
froths like kudzu, thrives with bicycle:
      Sweet potatoes roast
      on a brazier barrel-rigged.
      “Buy and eat my wares!”

      Three mattresses move
      by girl-pedaled bicycle,
      trailing small platform.

In China, eating is a grabbing art:
      Lazy Susan whirls,
      chop sticks collide in food space,
      Westerners red-faced.

In China, canines are a prize:
      Two Chinese children
      wash white fluffy dog — oh, why? —
      in pink plastic pan.

      A wild-eyed dog flies
      along blood-Red Chinese streets
      chasing its scant Life.

But in China,
Kubla Khan’s (and Coleridge’s)
Xanadu waits, buried, and
“skillful go-betweens,” matchmakers,
can disguise a boy’s lame leg,
a girl’s big, ugly nose. They call it
“Seeing the Flowers on Horseback.”

I fully understand why
two of the world’s richest,
Bill Gates and Warren Buffett,
want to rent a train,
travel “the length and breadth of China.”