Poetry - Issue 8 | February 2010
Two poems by Stephen Bunch
Occupations
“They have no true home as hunger and the enemy pursue them from every side.” (Father Dominguez, 1776)
Abiquiú is what’s left
after the slaves were freed
and enslaved and freed again,
until they couldn’t return to their people,
Paiute, Comanche, Kiowa, Pawnee, then land
granted, Genízaros, “new troops,” to serve,
muchas gracias, the governor.
After O’Keeffe stopped painting,
but before the ravens above
the White Place cease their cries,
Abiquiú is what remains of sunlight
along the line of the muezzin’s evening call
from the spice trader’s mosque
beyond the arroyo
to the newly-mudded morada
across the highway from Bode’s
General Merchandise,
where ristras, “live minnows,”
and a Jesus Action Figure
with Glow-in-the-Dark Hands
await bored travelers.
Next to a mailbox on the way out of town
a basin of bleached bones
sits on a sand-pitted washing machine.
The Chama’s swell subsides
after July rains.
Tamarisk overtakes the cholla
along the irrigation ditches.
Jeeps with boat trailers move on.
Someone builds a new school
for someone else’s children.
About the author
Stephen Bunch recently received the Langston Hughes Award for Poetry from the Lawrence Arts Center in Kansas. Poems can be found in Autumn Sky Poetry, The Externalist, and Fickle Muses. From 1978 to 1988, Stephen edited and published Tellus, a little magazine that featured work by Edward Dorn, Jane Hirshfield, Denise Low, Paul Metcalf, and Edward Sanders. Occasionally, Stephen pulls up his long-stemmed Kansas roots, and finds himself in Taos or Chicago.