Category: Poetry

Vigil for the Marcellus Shale

8/24/2013

Public Poetry in a Dire Time

The world is at a great crossroads, a moment defined by growing global awareness of the huge disparities between the power, wealth and rapacity of corporations, the sway they have over government, legislators, regulators, and even - to some extent - the courts, and the plight of ordinary people, waving as in Whitman's image, like tall prairie grass over the whole Earth.

The struggle to keep our environment free of hydraulic fracturing has become, in many ways, the epitome of this crossroads, pitting grassroots rural people, aroused and radicalized because of its dangers, against the power of the world's richest corporations - the oil and gas industry….

-Dwain Wilder, Co-editor

Against Giants

A rapturous hymn in celebration of water… a couple facing hopeless bills and hard choices…an elegy for land rendered sterile and a defiant shout of "Keep Off!"… ground zero in the fracking wars…A lying down before bulldozers. A brave refusal to move.

Poems of anger, poems of sorrow. What can a few poor poets do against the might of Exxon® and other corporate mammoths? For what comes next, we need the angry kind. We need poets to defy their power. We need small farmers and ordinary citizens who are brave, stubborn, unshakeable and cunning. We will play David to their Goliath. We're pretty handy with slingshots.

-Bart White, Co-editor

Click here to find out more about Vigil for the Marcellus Shale.

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"energy in America" by Steven Schroeder

8/22/2013

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You cain’t let oil wait! It’s waited too long. It wants to come up! I worked too long as a revivalist for something that didn’t come. The end of the world, No more waiting! Things got to materialize.
    - Oil King, in William Goyen’s Come, The Restorer

If finding and producing energy in America were as easy as Jed Clampett and his rifle made it look in the opening credits of the Beverly Hillbillies, we probably wouldn’t have needed to pioneer a well stimulation technology known as hydraulic fracturing. But it isn’t, and so we did – first using the process in 1947 to stimulate flow of natural gas from the Hugoton field in Kansas.
    - Halliburton, Fracturing 101

it produced phenomenal results for us
    - Dick Cheney

the end of the world
no more
waiting, it wants

a small percentage of additives
it wants it wants it wants
to come up

down the hatch
a little torture
a little force
a little murder
stimulate the flow

follow and as it were hound
nature in her wandering
drive her afterward

the same place the same
place the same
place

remediate

phenomenal results
enhanced interrogation
to stimulate
the flow.

either you are with us, or

no more

the incidence of fractures
is difficult to quantify

severe pain may
radiate anteriorly, may
mimic the breaking of a heart
and great earthquakes shall be
in divers places and famines
and pestilences and
fearful sights and
great signs

old men rave on
young men dreaming
dream murder and there is

a crack in everything and there is more
heat than light and there is no end in sight.

* * * *

Steven Schroeder is a poet and visual artist who has spent many years moonlighting as a philosophy professor. His most recent collections are Turn (with David Breeden) and Raging for the Exit. More at stevenschroeder.org.

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"The Nice Young Man Visits" by Rev. David Breeden

8/20/2013

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The very nice young man, even
Christian, comes way out to our
house to talk about the gas. The

gas that is surely down there
under the farm, just sitting there,
waiting (who would have thought?

Whoever could have got it out,
but isn’t it almost unbelievable,
how smart people have got

these days?) And he, the
very nice young man, even
Christian, tells me how it’s even

almost a miracle, how they do
all this. Something nobody
could ever have used before is

the hope of America. A
miracle--we’ll be free of all
those foreigners with their oil.

And we know what they want,
after all, don’t we? The nice man,
young and even Christian, says.

Yes, naturally, think about it all
you want. Just call him when.
Just call him when all I want

to do is sign and get rich.

* * * *

Rev. Dr. David Breeden, Minister has a Master of Fine Arts in poetry from The Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a PhD from the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi, with additional study in writing and Buddhism at Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado. He also has a Master of Divinity degree from Meadville Lombard Theological School. The author of many books, Rev. David blogs at wayofoneness.wordpress.com and revdocdavid.tumblr.com. He tweets at @dbreeden.

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"Listen" by Marian O’Brien Paul

8/15/2013

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1968

2013

“He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says ...” Rev. 3:22

Springtime, I a new bride
my spouse a dairy farmer’s son
now an Airman First Class
sent to serve at NORAD

Our first house, a cottage perched
on the rim of a mountain-made bowl
the Indians named Manitou Springs
because of healing mineral waters …

Gift of the Manitou, the Great Spirit
medicinal springs where no killing
could occur, where ailing members
of enemy bands came without fear …

Comfy on my couch, door screen
sieving pine scent from the wind
Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring
open on my lap, I read her words

Eager to share, I soon discerned
a boy who grew up on a farm
in the heyday of pesticides
was not ready to listen

Though the residues persist, we
are forbidden to poison earth
except to fight malaria; but
lusting after oil is lawful

Puncturing the ocean floor like
adolescents popping pimples
hydraulically flushing the soil
for fuel, no matter the scars …

Let the Manitou, Great Spirit
declare the earth off-limits
forbid its fracture; let humans
frail creatures, let us listen ...

* * *

Born in Kansas City, Missouri, Marian O’Brien Paul has lived in Turkey, Ireland, and in several Midwestern states but mostly Nebraska. A retired teacher of writing and literature, in 2007she moved to Chicago, Illinois. In April 2013 her poem “Cahokia Mounds, Illinois” appeared in The Midwest Prairie Review (Univ. of Wisconsin, Madisonl), and “Legacy of Apple Trees” appeared at Spherical Tabby. Other of her poems can be found in the “Poetic Asides” column, Writer’s Digest (Feb. 2011) and in The Stony Thursday Book (Limerick, Ireland, 2010), as well as in various journals, magazines, and e-zines over the years.

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from "THUMB NOTES ALMANAC -- Hitchhiking The Marcellus Shale" by Craig Czury

8/14/2013

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Because all signs say this traffic has work to do
standing between my potholes across from Allen’s Garage

The day is blue sky with storm clouds
wind warm any colder would be snow

Because people around here are frugal
maybe a $15,000 kitchen remodeled here or a new roof there

Because now the heat’s off the meth labs

The heat’s off off the farmers’ chemical fertilizers
draining into the Chesapeake

America’s largest labor boom
America’s loudest mic check

Despite the money these guys make   the hours

Despite the gag clause

Hearing my name called from under the SouthTown Market overhang

Even though owning this land when I sold the gas
what exactly will I own what will the gas company own

How will what has belonged in my family for generations
be compromised or lost

Or if I sell
Or as long as I hold out

Athough it was raining like hell I was drenched
I got a ride from a guy with heater in the back
then he fired up a doobie and I was in Scranton

She says she’d like having a steady winter
not snow one day and 70s the next

Even though he was an odd but likable character

She was driving a company truck
took a side road up to a well pad to measure 4- or 6-inch bolts

Because you’re a writer aren’t you I’m not supposed to be talking to you

Because even though Joe’s is closed someone’s in there with an airbrush

Yes but I’m not that kind of writer

There’re no complaints now (points to the grassed-over pipeline track)
there’ll be snowmobilers all over this in another month

She takes off her glasses gives them to Kolosky
she has video screen eyes they don’t focus

Because it’s warm
Because the sun’s clouded-over
Because it’s late afternoon
already getting dark

Because this is going-home traffic
deer hunters and company trucks

Because 20 more minutes it will be too dark
and I’ll walk back up the hill call it a night

All because I decided to go out for a walk
All because it’s a 7 mile interview to P.J.’s to watch 48 hour softball

Because I signed early with the gas
enough to get me over the hump each month
+ veteran’s disability

Where did you live growing up?

Compromised or lost?

Because we are always trying to find ways to carry more stuff

Name specific trees flowers animals natural landmarks
secret hiding places images from recurring dreams

Because these rolling green hills no longer clear my mind

Early morning methane mist

Coffee at Lockharts

List the names of farm equipment tools and vehicles
List the names gas equipment tools and vehicles

She looks over at him before she answers

How’d you get so isolated up here with this mess

Sitting over my shadow writing this
reading the old roads
the old train beds trolley beds

Because every farm under its soil has a rock quarry

Because I’m driving my tractor to church join me

Despite all these kids being dead by now
or having serious problems by the time they’re my age
I see them
with their heads down on their desks throwing chalk
spiders have woven their hair into a skein of window light
spiders
those mystical ghosts erasing this dusty schoolhouse
begging to be clapped

No there won’t be a workers’ dispute

although I cut the girl’s hair with my pocket knife
with what they get paid
until they start coming down with something

No there won’t be a Union

So then she went into what I consider borderline stuff
a sinister undertone of poverty and secrecy

Although the men look just as gruff in the black & white
photo of bridge workers just as foreign

Although we’ve all suffered from what we do

living with a local girl around Elk Lake
she’s a landman

ice cooler gas can   diesel can   kerosene

one step up from a rough neck a well hand
I was surprised he wasn’t wearing a cap

Despite it’s pitch dark straddling the drainage ditch and road kill
Despite the slow stare down when the headlights catch me

Because I haul junk all day I haul junk copper and brass
the out of staters’ summer homes in winter

Despite the parking lot full of Mexican gas workers
I’d jump in there and take a baseball bat to every damn one of them

Someday you’re going to bring your education over here
and we’re all going to be full of information

Despite people around here thinking they’re getting rich
all they’re getting is a new truck or a new barn

Deer with cow cut-outs under apple tree

Because they’re just ripping everything up
look at that (points to pipeline swath) just a raceway for four-wheelers

Because I see an old lawnmower and throw it in the back of my truck
an old bicycle in a yard sell it for gas money at the scrapyard

Flashlight and pepper spray

I’m less scared of what the gas industry is doing to our future
than I am computers instant karma texting

Despite the chores and the animals
The Veterans On-The-Farm Training
we worked the farm and went to Keystone part time

Because my brother put himself through college in the ‘40s
trenching the Tennessee pipeline

I came back from the Air Force a pacifist

It’s a ballast against the wind
to hold the roof on tight and weigh it down

The gas was a big surprise

Although working at Proctor & Gamble
rolling paper towels out of chemicals into sheets

Although working at the prison
I did way worse things than a lot of them inside

Despite losing my leg scuba diving in the Keys

Because
we are what
we repeatedly do Aristotle

Because just saying hello becomes a gas issue
never mind the trucks

The colorful used-lot triangular grand opening string of flags

Country good ol´boys coming up to live among country good ol´boys

Although they’re not Mexicans they turn into Mexicans simply
being gas workers

The clash and gaps

Despite another language from another century
passed down by moss-weathered elders

Somewhere in the background I’ve been looking for you

Configuring these short rides I can see my breath

* * * *

"MARCELLUS JOURNAL" by Craig Czury appears in Vigil for the Marcellus Shale, edited by Dwain Wilder and Bart White.

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Vigil for the Marcellus Shale

"energy in America" by Steven Schroeder

"The Nice Young Man Visits" by Rev. David Breeden

"Listen" by Marian O’Brien Paul

from "THUMB NOTES ALMANAC -- Hitchhiking The Marcellus Shale" by Craig Czury

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