Issue 7 - Debra Shirley

Promised Land

She was born on the prairie in 1935,

some place east of Oklahoma City,

a town that no longer exists.

Her Daddy dragged her and her mother,

raggedy as dustbowl lungs,

all over Colorado that first year.

West Slope fruit farms to

silver claims in Cripple Creek,

ten stakes in twelve months.

They finally lit

on the farm fields of rural Illinois,

where she raised a flood

of  brothers and sisters, eight in all,

one after another.

By sixteen, she was cocked and ready to spring,

determined chin pointed toward Chicago,

a song in her throat.

She was all but down the road

when he sauntered in,

smooth talked her into moving south,

back to his home place in the Blue Ridge.

The promised land,

in the end, turned up to be

just another empty platform without a town.

--Debra Shirley

Debra Shirley is Director of after school and summer arts programming at two elementary schools in Arvada, Colorado. Her work has been included in Tar River Poetry, The Cortland Review, Margie Review: The American Journal of Poetry, Word Riot, Main Street Rag, the Playwright's Showcase of the Western Region and elsewhere.

Previous Page            Table of Contents                        Next Page

Issue 5: Debra Shirley

Found Word Poem No. 1

                                    words from To a God Unknown by John Steinbeck

1.

Beating rain

whips the tortured air,

hot, sweet afternoon.

Sidewise and down,

she confessed weakness

and pleasure,

pity and love,

a weak thing,

a good strong thing.

2.

Head high, restrained from flying,

(she) looked secretly

to read his temper.

A wife before spring,

silver bell, little bell

ringing.

Flattered, uncovered,

hanging beside.

Me.

3.

Little to be done.

Dry grass yellow(s) the foothills.

Thick winter.

Hauling Water

February,

the concrete pad and gutter 

beneath the neighbor’s spigot

a slab of tricky ice,

every tendered step

a contest.  Empty,

plastic jugs whiff and flail,

no remedy.

One gallon of water weighs

better than eight pounds.

A single full jug hangs like a sinker.

Slight for seven and ten,

we carry two apiece

for equal ballast.

Frigid water sloshes

the jugs’ mouths and necks,

soaking the make-do socks

bagging our stiff fists.

Skirting the dirt road,

spindled ice grins

in the low cutbanks, gleaming

baleen strung in red clay.

Debra Shirley’s work has been included or is forthcoming in The Adirondack Review, The Cortland Review, Nimrod International Journal of Prose and Poetry, The Main Street Rag, Margie Review: The American Journal of Poetry, Tar River Poetry, The Playwright's Showcase of the Western Region and elsewhere. 

Previous Page                        Table of Contents                        Next Page