Slipping out and under Osawatomie, Kansas
Eighth Street Bridge in my rust-bound pirogue and transistor radio
While my shitty fish stink pickup and
my truck sinks in aluminum can and plastic bag silt
Onto the Marais Des Cygnes
on the river to snag muscular, bottom-sucking pinks and whites
To bring prehistoric swimmers
to McClatchy the fish restaurant guy in Louisburg for customers
To spend fish-money on daughter’s return sweet Delia just like Johnny Cash said
to make happy and to make the ex-Mrs. Me go away
To spend gross Spoonbill poundage on a dress and fourth grade
far from fish and a bridge
After slipping my river rig into the water with a buzz
and I catch perhaps my ninth Spoon that day
The radio or actually, from the throaty, earnest redneck on the radio
I learn of ex-Mrs. Me and the crystal drug
Sweet Delia’s gone without crayons or cash from fish-eating folk like Johnny said
and I see her mother’s shack not a football field upriver
And a thump beneath my bow at four knots sounds my line’s future
and is not a pink, is not white, but could’ve used fourth grade
Craig M. Workman graduated in 2010 with a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and Media Arts. He is the 2012 recipient of the McKinney Prize in Short Fiction and the 2014 Whispering Prairie Press Flash Fiction Contest winner. He is an adjunct professor/lecturer of composition, American fiction and creative writing, an I-Ph.D. student and a Doctoral Teaching Fellow at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and an adjunct faculty member at Donnelly College. His work has appeared or is forthcoming nearly two dozen journals, including in
Kansas City Voices, Midwestern Gothic, and London Literary Review. He currently lives in Prairie Village, Kansas.
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Categories: Poetry, Pop Culture, Themed
Tags: Craig M. Workman, e-zine, ezine, hyperbole, longing, melancholy, melancholy hyperbole, new, poem, poet, poetry, poets, Pop Culture, Slipping Out for Delia, submit, writing
Melancholy Hyperbole 