Emily Dickinson and Elvis Presley in Heaven<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
They call each other `E.’ \u00a0Elvis picks
\nwildflowers near the river and brings
\nthem to Emily. She explains half-rhymes to him.<\/p>\n
In heaven Emily wears her hair long, sports
\nLevis and western blouses with rhinestones.
\nElvis is lean again, wears baggy trousers<\/p>\n
and T-shirts, a letterman’s jacket from Tupelo High.
\nThey take long walks and often hold hands.
\nShe prefers they remain just friends. Forever.<\/p>\n
Emily’s poems now contain naugahyde, Cadillacs,
\nElectricity, jets, TV, Little Richard and Richard
\nNixon. The rock-a-billy rhythm makes her smile.<\/p>\n
Elvis likes himself with style. This afternoon
\nhe will play guitar and sing “I Taste A Liquor
\nNever Brewed” to the tune of “Love Me Tender.”<\/p>\n
Emily will clap and harmonize. \u00a0Alone
\nin their cabins later, they’ll listen to the river
\nand nap. They will not think of Amherst<\/p>\n
or Las Vegas. They know why God made them
\nroommates. It’s because America
\nwas their hometown. It’s because<\/p>\n
God is a thing without
\nfeathers. It’s because
\nGod wears blue suede shoes.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
“Emily Dickinson and Elvis Presley in Heaven” is reprinted from The Coast Starlight: Collected Poems 1976-2006 <\/em>(Indianapolis: Dog Ear Press, 2006).<\/p>\n Hans Ostrom<\/a>\u00a0is Professor of African American Studies and English at the University of Puget Sound, where he won the President\u2019s Award for Teaching.\u00a0 Ostrom grew up in a small town in California\u2019s Sierra Nevada.\u00a0 Later he attended the University of California, Davis, where he studied poetry-writing with Karl Shapiro.\u00a0 Ostrom went on to earn a B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in English from UCD. He has taught since 1983 at Puget Sound. His publications in poetry include the books\u00a0The Coast Starlight: Collected Poems 1976-2006<\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/em>\u00a0and Clear a Place for Good: Poems 2006-2012<\/em>.<\/a>\u00a0Hans\u2019s poems have appeared in Poetry Northwest, Ploughshares, the Washington Post<\/em>, and a variety of other magazines.With Kate Haake and Wendy Bishop, he wrote Metro: Journeys in Writing Creatively <\/em>(Longman), a textbook about writing fiction, poetry, and drama. Ostrom has also published books about the work of Langston Hughes, and he is co-editor with David Macey of The Greenwood Encyclopedia<\/em> of African American Literature<\/em> (5 vols.) He is a novelist and a screenwriter. \u00a0 His YouTube channel, Langstonify,<\/a><\/em> features over 800 videos of poems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Emily Dickinson and Elvis Presley in Heaven They call each other `E.’ \u00a0Elvis picks wildflowers near the river and brings them to Emily. She explains half-rhymes to him. In heaven Emily wears her hair long, sports Levis and western … Continue reading