Amarillo (1971)

Amarillo (1971) Vievee Francis (bio) Inland where no seagulls circled, no sea, but storms of dust and dust, the heartland, mouthless heart of thistles, and waves of sun, of salt, and meals of fish in their cans of oil, every surface boiled to rust. Dusk brought howls, the trickster gods, whom cowboys shot and then impaled. A scruff of scarecrows lined the fence-posts, coyotes with their lolling miens, their smiles now fixed as any man’s. Sons, so much like fathers, strung and roped their own small finds: frogs, rats and prairie dogs. From that panhandle the years rose like a dust of gulls. O water eyed calf lowing from the maze, how yellow the world? How the blue bonnets mock the sea. [End Page 113] Vievee Francis Vievee Francis, a native of Texas, is author of Blue-Tail Fly (Wayne State University Press, 2008), her first collection of poems. Her poems have also appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Margie, Detroit’s Metro Times, Callaloo, and other periodicals. She lives in Detroit, Michigan. Copyright © 2009 Charles H. Rowell

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