Sunday, June 3, 2012

Dead Mule

I have a poem in the current issue of the Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. It's about a famous outlaw of the Natchez Trace who came to Christ later in life...in prison.

It's called "The Last Word," and here it is. You can also see here the dead mule, pushing up daisies. Perfect for a Sunday, and a Poetry Someday.

This is a fun magazine for which you must provide a "Southern Legitimacy Statement" to prove your connection to southern literature or the south. Mine involves sugar cane and hushpuppies from my happy childhood in the south.

And now, to turn my gardening adventures into a reality show:

Previously on Attempting An Avocado: Kathleen complained about the squirrels stealing and burying her avocado pits, but it was her own darn fault for leaving the jelly glasses on the picnic table so the suspended pits could enjoy a little sunshine.

Synopsis of current episode: Planting dwarf marigolds, Kathleen discovers one of the avocado pits in the dirt. She deposits it in the leaf mulch temporarily.  A week later, she finds it has sprouted! Joyfully, she pots it in a blue ceramic pot and puts it safely inside in a sunny window.

Thanks again to Mark Hofstetter for the avocado seedling.

11 comments:

Sandy Longhorn said...

Loved the poem, but also love the story of the avocado pit now sprouted. :)

Karen J. Weyant said...

Great! This is one of my favorite journals.

seana graham said...

A beautiful poem.

Not so beautiful a mule.

Kathleen said...

Thanks, all!

As I look closely at the illustration and at the sprouted leaf, I am suspending my disbelief (on toothpicks). It might be a begonia, somehow in the soil beside the pit. Expect another episode of Green Thumbs Up: A Reality Show on Gardening Haphazardly in Kathleen's Wild & Crazy Eden & Blue Ceramic Pot.

Molly said...

But beauty makes us

stumble, more than wine.

!! love these lines, and the whole poem. I also love the idea of a southern legitimacy statement, which, of course, I could never attempt --

Kathleen said...

Thanks, Molly!!

Hannah Stephenson said...

Really interesting form in that poem...and fun magazine, indeed!

Cathy said...

Wouldn't it be wonderful to pick ripe avocados off a houseplant? Hmm, but maybe then we'd be too joyful to write poems. A little tree is quite good too.

The poem is lovely and exotic, just like the white horse.

Kathleen said...

Thanks, Cathy and Hannah. Yes!--to homegrown avocados. Wouldn't that be nice?

Hannah, this is sort of a broken sonnet. It has some dropped lines that would be indented, but sometimes online mags have trouble with indentation, so this is a compromise that is fine by me.

Anonymous said...

"But beauty makes us/stumble"

LOVE that! and the saga of the avocado.

sherry

Kathleen said...

Thanks, Sherry. And I do think this is truly the avocado I've got growing now, not some random begonia or creeping charlie. But we'll see...