Lee LaMarr

Lee LaMarr (ufound@arnegard.ndak.net) lives and writes near the

confluence of the Yellowstone and Missouri rivers, in western

North Dakota. Where the antelope roam and the buffalo are the

newest chic meat.

hole in the road

there's a fly as big as a nickel in here

sounds like a B-52

a dead 52 if he gets to close to this swatter.

man alive it's hot tonight, still as a corpse too

only sound is the fly and the fridge …and outside?

the noisiest things are the rocks.

man-o-man,

this dusty dakota town is start'n

to grope me like a nasty uncle.

sshhhh, shush - hear that?

moon rising.

An Unnoticement

For the second year in a row,

North Dakota had the highest percentage

of outbound moves of any state.

-Bismarck Tribune, January 24, 1998

…once again

this morning rose hot for us. Let's call it Nazi hot.

Let’s say we start sweating like Jews

…as if in boxcars marking time because we’ve become incorrect .

Know if you will our fate is certain, like a wood pile shrinking,

now believe the smoke as theory and you'll feel the spark.

…nevertheless

if you look you will find ferns

deep in the coulees ‘round here.

They survive grouped in little bell jar places

cool and damp where the orange lichen clings,

and the old ash and plum, the whole moist patch

smells a green heaven.

…i read once

that in 1740, Russian and French peasants

took to eating ferns because of famine

but that some survived on potatoes.

I learned true history is but dig or pluck.

A Letter To A Young Friend Out West

Iver,

today the wind do the bones some howl

so owl the silence going brown such slowly

to harvest thoughts these way be go

and sit to winter my book of never.

And how are you getting along in those

mountains, in those classrooms square,

where the professor professes concept,

black sugar, and successful technique,

perhaps even marketing?

And how do your women flow, in

that bedroom square, where the sex

professes concept, long sugar, and

successful technique, perhaps even

marketing?

Books recently acquired:

Poems For the Millennium, Volumes One & Two

anthology of poems and art, modern and post modern

E.E. Cummings, Complete Poems 1904-1962

The Collected Poems of Langston Hughs

Without; by Donald Hall

his latest

Aloud, Voices From the Nuyorkian Poets Cafe; anthology

Selected Poems; by Mark Strand

smallish collection of his work

The Sounds of Poetry; Robert Pinsky

treatise on sound as spoken word.

The Best of American Poetry; 1997 & 1998 anthologies

Making Your Own Days; by Kenneth Kock...essays on poetry

Flash Fiction, 72 Very Short Stories; anthology

Music recently acquired:

Dead Can Dance; the cd, Spiritchaser.

which about I can say only ,

_ a sand bar will

reveal footprints, pelican feathers,

wind and soft slate the color of

one cottonwood torn from upstream

now slung like an Ansel Adam's

black & white_

.jpeg included for effect.

other music that I'll not name

but for the sound.

Irish eyes do dance.

Shorelines, those tribes uncharted.

When we hunt, the Cougar will notice.

Females sing me color scented.

We know from birth the requirement

to experiment or die. The nipple. The light.

The walking away. All are required, all are

instinct. All are intuitions unique but not.

And envelopes are of no use without

language, without conceptual postage,

without new content...Thus;

Lee LaMarr