Notes from a Sodbuster\u2019s Wife, Kansas, 1868<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
What really got us in the end\u2014
\nwe women who didn\u2019t make it,
\nwho withered and blew away in the open\u2014
\nwas the wind. Space, yes, and distance,
\ntoo, from neighbors, a piano back in Boston.<\/p>\n
But above all, the wind.<\/p>\n
In our letters it shrieks hysteria from sod huts,
\nvomits women prematurely undone by loneliness,
\nboils up off the horizon to suck dry
\ntheir desire as it flattened the stubborn grasses.
\nNot convinced? Scan the photographs,
\ngrainy and sepia-toned, like old leather.
\nStudy our bony forms in plain black dresses,
\nour mouths drawn tight as a saddle cinch,
\naccusation leaking from rudderless eyes, betrayed.<\/p>\n
I tried. Lord knows I tried.
\nSurvived the locusts and even snakes
\nthat fell from the ceiling at night,
\nslithering between us in bed.
\nI dreamed of water, chiffon, the smell
\nof dead leaves banked against a rotting log.
\nI heard opera, carriage wheels on cobblestone.
\nCried and beat my fists raw into those earthen walls.<\/p>\n
The wind. Even as it scoured
\nthe skin it flayed the soul,
\nthat raked, pitted shell.
\nAnd how like the Cheyenne,
\nappearing, disappearing,
\nno fixed location,<\/p>\n
not even a purpose one could name.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Peter Ludwin<\/a> lives in Kent, Washington.\u00a0 He is the recipient of a Literary Fellowship<\/a> from Artist Trust.\u00a0 His first book, A Guest in All Your Houses,<\/em> <\/a>was published in 2009 by Word Walker Press.\u00a0His second, Rumors of Fallible Gods<\/em>, was a finalist for the 2010 Gival Press Poetry Award, and will be published this summer by Presa Press.\u00a0 For eleven years Ludwin has been a participant in the San Miguel Poetry Week in Mexico.\u00a0He works as an art show manager, and loves to travel, having most recently visited the Tibetan region of Sichuan Province,China.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Notes from a Sodbuster\u2019s Wife, Kansas, 1868 What really got us in the end\u2014 we women who didn\u2019t make it, who withered and blew away in the open\u2014 was the wind. Space, yes, and distance, too, from neighbors, a … Continue reading