Mending
I watch her delicately wield
a needle, coax thread
through a beaten pair
of my father’s Levis.
We’re in the family room,
with all its books. The old oak table
is covered in charcoal sketches,
badly disfigured hands
we drew with our eyes
closed. Like all three fates,
she measures with fidelity.
Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold” plays
on the radio. The blue
Hyacinth macaw perched
on her shoulder sings
out of tune. My mother knows
this one, hums along.
What she doesn’t know is that
my father has maxed
out another credit card
in her name.
Storm Warning in the Big Dry
for Joe Wilkins
An empty bed with shallow cutbanks.
Shadows of sandstone and cacti like broken
teeth. The prairie whispers until the wind picks
up. Where I’m from the sky is a wide open
mouth. Tarnished with slivers of lightning,
the storm ushers in something ancient,
rusty plumage on a red-tailed hawk caught
in a gale, the wrought iron spires atop
a herd of pronghorns. There isn’t much
rain in the badlands, but tonight holds
promise of a river. A dark-clouded curtain
washes over the valley. So many waking
bodies. A duo of eastern blue birds
seek shelter after foraging in yucca
for reserves. There’s a house with a nail
inching its way out. Nestled inside
the Bull Mountains, a turquoise
clutch lies still, so still.
Daniel Lurie is a Jewish, rural writer, who grew up in Eastern Montana. He holds an MFA in Poetry from the University of Idaho, where he currently teaches First-Year Composition. Daniel is a poetry reader for Chestnut Review. His work is forthcoming in Pleiades, Wild Roof Journal, West Trade Review, and has appeared in Fugue, NewVerseNews, The Palouse Review, FeverDream, and others. His poem “One Night Only,” is stamped onto a concrete street in Billings.