When everything tastes like chicken (Part 2)
Last weekend, I was asked to judge for the Dukes of Ale’s State Fair Pro-Am Craft brew contest. It was fun, engaging, involved a lot of talking, sniffing, and tasting of beer, lots and lots of beer. As I was judging, I couldn’t help but think how slippery judging the aroma, appearance, flavor and mouthfeel of beer really is.
Judging beer or poetry and determining what is “good” and “bad” is very hard, if not impossible. Yet, I think there is a criteria for it that a lot of us recognize, and that criteria is actually pretty simple. The criteria that overwhelmingly is used to prescribe some sort of value on art is “craft”...
Weekly Poetry: A mudslide on the rocks
I held the glass suspended
between fingertips,
as firm a grip as any lover’s
thighs. My world churned
with the alcohol, as volatile
when exposed to air.
It was the first bar we passed
when we left the park.
“This must be where all the white
people go,” you said
as we canvassed the dim
in search of stools...
‘Sierra Challenge’—the impossible dream
After years of declining customers and service and increasing crime, Mexico finally ended rail passenger service a few years ago—with one exception. The tiny and impossibly scenic Chihuahua al Pacifico line still runs from the prosperous ranching state capital of Chihuahua to the Pacific Ocean, primarily because it is the greatest tourist attraction in the Copper Canyon region of the Sierra Nevada.
A new book, Sierra Challenge: The Construction of the Chihuahua al Pacifico Railroad (Brranca Press, 206 pages), by the late Glenn Burgess and his son Don Burgess, tells the dramatic story of the construction of the railroad in words and photographs...
Weekly Poem: If Only
Losing control
as one grows old
could be divine.
A hoarder’s ecstatic
Zen trick
into letting go.
Hades ransacked
Zeus stripped of bolts
& tossed from Olympus...
Two plays deep in the heart of New Mexico
Last weekend I saw two plays that have deep roots in New Mexico. Although they sharply contrasted with each other in most respects, they shared something of the humor and tragedy of life amid our luxuriant culture and arid land.
One of the plays was Revelations, a comedy performed by the Sandia Performing Arts Company at Vista Grande Community Center in Sandia Park. The other was Dreamlandia, an ambitious tragedy performed by Working Classroom in the Barelas neighborhood in Albuquerque...
Weekly Poem: Sing no hymns save frog-croaks
Frogs, a sort of mascot for my brother
whose friends called him Hoppy.
One of his tree ornaments,
a frog wearing a Santa hat,
hangs on our tree every Christmas,
near the back.
Flat fields of his youth provided
nowhere to hide, the sky was too close;
so he left muddy rivers, farm ponds
and sloughs to become a frog out of water,
exotic desert amphibian, trying to drown
Vietnam nightly
at the Green Onion Bar...
Weekly Poem: In Hobbs
Monday morning sunrise – Hobbs, New Mexico, October 25, 2010
Already the west winds blow, relentless
Rocking the pickup we huddle inside
The dogs and I
“In Hobbs,” granddaughter Lily shrugs her two-year old
Shoulders and remembers the summer green Ruidoso mountains
I am on the edge of town
Down a gravel road that runs by the ruins of a
World War II Quartermaster’s depot
Abandoned now, only concrete borders and cactus around...
Loving our children means educating them
What does it mean to say we love our children, or that we believe they are our future? What does it mean when our elected officials tell us that education is important, or that the US has the best educational system in the world (a lie we hear frequently, from our president down to the gullible man or woman on the street)?
The country that glibly considers itself to be the most advanced, the most developed, the most powerful in the world, spends just 5.5 percent of its GDP educating its children. According to UN 2011 statistics, the United States is first in the world in military spending, designating 4.7 percent of its GDP to its armed forces...
Weekly Poetry: The Mother and The Daughter
I haven’t written a poem in your likeness for some time.
I tried. I took the broom and beat the cobwebs.
Lit one hissing cigarette after hissing cigarette,
Let a dish fall to the floor, a porcelain scream.
I let the quiet shattering happen but could not eek it out.
Then I thought of this. You the young mother,
a knotted belt at your waist, slim and attractive
in photos. Your teeth gleaming and straight
like a string of pearls...
Weekly Poem: Nature is Inevitable
Don’t think about what’s inevitable, give it corn.
Give it a pint of cow dung, give it your underwear.
Not everything that’s inevitable is
You think the world’s coming to an end, give it the finger.
After all you’re not killing anyone, you’re not executing.
You’re just commenting. You have a right to choose what you say.
I’ve come back from the costume of my past & I’m inevitable.
And I’m not causing a little girl with flaming arm crying for help
to face the future you’ve given her: the power-mongers who
stick money up their ass & fart gas, are —
causing this war against the spirit, this war against the Earth
this war against the god of my parents...