DRIVING GRAVEL ROADS: 50 PROSE POEMS by Jim Johnson

ISBN 978-1-890193-90-4
60 pages
6" x 7 1/2"
Trade paper edition

Glendive, Montana, Minus Twenty-Seven
Degrees, Yahoo

Now there is the snow on the backs of the black
cattle and on the edges of the highway carved by
the wind. To get here I have gone through loneliness
the way a row of fenceposts goes off into the gray
snow-covered prairie holding on to only a wire. At
the café I order side pork and eggs, the waitress
saying, We bellyache about the weather for days,
then when it warms up, it's something else. Across
the ice-covered highway at the motel diesel smoke
was left to dream all night. Beyond the fields are
white lakes with rows of stubble. A lone horse leans
against a barn that leans against a hill. And iron
irrigator holds out its arms waiting for the summer
drought.

The Things A Man Keeps

The things a man now keeps he keeps in the cab of a
pickup truck: friction tape, jumper cables, county map,
dinosaur bones, pliers, coffee mug with Town Pump
logo, so many legal papers, letters to be mailed, maybe
a tumbleweed or two, and, as we sharply turned the
corner by the fairgrounds, a box, a small sealed cardboard
box that slid along the dashboard all the way to the edge,
struck the windshield, and fell to my feet. That's my dad,
he said.