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Portraits in a Lost Grey
- Prairie Schooner
- University of Nebraska Press
- Volume 80, Number 2, Summer 2006
- pp. 188-189
- 10.1353/psg.2006.0107
- Article
- Additional Information
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Prairie Schooner 80.2 (2006) 188-189
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Portraits in a Lost Grey
Robert Bense
Portraits in a Lost Grey
Theirs, one of the last I saw
a cabin staked to a hillside
porch pulling awaytwo corrugated sheets
from the rusted roof
in the gully belowDorie, George's wife, never feeling
quite right in her head
after a childhood fallwash lines with no run
up and down the hill squirrel
for dinner, supperhe was a tenant farmer
like my father up creek
night-hunting togetherpossum, racoon, skunk
the virgin woods sour
with black oakhis twelve dogs ate chickens
wouldn't hunt
days he ran traps [End Page 188]farmed with mules
didn't trust horse sense
the iron of tractorshe said the only pain
he ever felt was in his
dick they had no childrenwhen he died, when
isn't clear, Dorie
no longer could noticewhen she died, no one
was sure not the kind to leave
a sideboard or settings for eightthey've been gone so long
I'd like to see them George
whistling "Jimmie crack corn"in quick shadows of the clearing
Dorie hanging to a porch rail
calling George to squirrel.
...