Henry J Hughes
A Father Is Shot In South Dakota
On a rail siding, men in yellow box cars
mix bourbon in coffee cups, play cards until four.
They haul grain to Fargo, and the whores walk home
along the tracks.
Early July sixteenth, I saw the small crowd,
and the body still in Silt Creek.
A brown hump with a tan, dry spot on top.
It’s Davis, the name passed up the bank.
The sheriff stepped from his radio car,
squeezing a tall coke. Damn trainmen, he said,
drink, gamble and shoot. Davis’ daughter,
a year older than me. I looked into her eyes
and said I’m really sorry.
It wasn’t for the loss, but for humiliation -
father shot holding cards and Beam.
She covered her swollen face. From then on,
I cared only for the living, begging
the dead to leave with grace.
magazine list
- Features
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- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
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- Fabric
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- French Literary Review, The
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- Global Tapestry
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- Iota
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- Lamport Court
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- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
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- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The