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Kevin Zepper
Sugartown
a beat beet pile
on the edge of
a prairie berg.
Sleeping gems,
pale roots form
dirty snow hills
up to azure
Midwest horizon.
Farmers are prospectors,
extracting the tangled ore
from rich, brown earth,
machine processed,
sweet little diamonds
in double strength
white paper.
Precious sweat
from beets,
mined from furrowed earth,
treacle trickle of money from
frozen big rock candy mountains
by soily silos and glass houses.
Hot summers and
fecal perfume drift
through town from
surrounding farms.
An ear to the ground,
listen;
low rumble of growth
below soil,
deep moan
from hungry beets.
Hired hands hoe
stubborn greedy weeds,
stealing sun and soil
between rows.
Beet trucks chase
the hands on the clock,
diligent as storybook dwarves
in old stories,
coming home nightly
scuffed with scruff,
loads of ore from
thousand acre mines.
Raw, wild sweetness.
Heart land
boom-chakra-laka
midwest, middle midriff
absolute middle
middle west
mid-chakra
mid-chest
heart, heartland
heart chakra
rows of rye and dirham
lined up, visual rhythm
waves of grass and grain
motion, pulse
pumping blood through heart
land
porthole to the east,
window to the west
ripples at two ends of an ocean of land
meeting, cancelling in the middle,
middle rift, mid rift
mid west
picking up the watery signal,
turning it back
waving back in ripples to east and west
ringing back to the head and foot
of america,
pumping loud from the heart,
amber waves of grain,
blue waves of great lakes,
black waves of plowed furrows
sound waves across bridge
mid range,
connecting highs and lows,
treble and bass
waves of wheat
rye and dirham,
frozen rhythms
vibrating the eyes
trance for miles
side to side
reaching from sea to shining sea,
open arms from the heart
land
heart land
heart chakra
boom boom
boom chakra chakra
cynic lives on fringes
on outer edges,
corded borders
inland
in the midlands
nothing but land,
flat canvas
to paint pictures on the horizon
color and shade with waves
in the brain
with waves of grain rippling
golden fingers brushing the lower edges
brush stroke for stroke of heart
pumping with blood
from the heart land
heart chakra, boom
chakra laka laka
©2009 by Kevin Zepper
Kevin Zepper is an Associate Professor at Minnesota State University Moorhead.
He teaches in an alternative learning environment, the Corrick Center for
General Education In 2008, Blue Light Press published his chapbook, I Bring
You Dead Things. He has previously published two other chapbooks,
(Suffering From) An Apartment Complex (Plan B Press), and The
Fifth Ramone (Dacotah Territory Press). Zepper writes and reads his
work when he isn’t grading papers.
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