FOLK COLLECTION 11: The Skaggs Foundation Cowboy Poetry Collection

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Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

Paul Zarzyski

Why I like Butte! - Or, "How She Goin' Today, Just?"

From the Gogebic Iron Range - "shaking ground," in Ojibwa - across open range of the Plains Indian

bar, phonebook, friends

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

Paul Zarzyski

The Poet & The Picker

On that bright night when Music gives a lift to lonesome Poetry hitchhiking 40 light years of bad road, it isn't long before they find out stars are nothing less than hot-note reflections of polished chrome.

music, guitar, jewel

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

Paul Zarzyski

Monte Carlos Express - POst Office Box 258, 15.3 Miles Home

I've checked fence doing 80 in a low-rider Chevrolet springing the borrow pit like a pack mule that hates crossing running water.

gamble, booze, mail

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

Paul Zarzyski

"The Car That Brought You Here Still Runs"

It takes more than gasoline and gumption to get you to Zortman - more than whimsy or a wild inkling to rekindle history. It takes a primal prairie hunkering in sunless gulches, a longing of short Fourth of July parades, the best-kept-secret cafe with a waitress who commutes 50 miles from Malta -

breakfast, diner, mouth

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

Paul Zarzyski

The Day Beelzebub Gave His Jezebel A Hotfoot...

... it was 52 below zero in Butte, Montana where they took them an eternity to drive up through froze over, their fire-engine-red Firebird vapor-locking to a frigid halt as they unwittingly drove beneath Our Lady Of The Rockies - Snow White with an attitude, all ninety blessed feet and eighty steel virgin tons of her standing vigil over the Berkeley Pit.

devil, winter, truck

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

Paul Zarzyski

The Capital Of Montana (A "Found Poem")

Picture her printing this in the skimpy margins of a dollar bill - cockeyed George cracking, under magnification, the semblance of a devilish grin -

dollar, sex, waitress

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

Paul Zarzyski

Making Her Day

When Dorothy, queen of the drive-thru bank tellers, looks cyborg-bored going about her ad nauseam rote goldfish-in-a-bowl motions, I whip my viper-red Monte Carlo lowrider, its shark's-snout hood with chrome sneer,

bank, drive-thru, humor

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

Paul Zarzyski

Hot Loaves In The Monte Carlo

In part, because Christ chose hearty bread to complement both the fishes and the wine, because Charlie Russell named his favorite horse Monte, loved Christmas, and Great Falls is Kid Russell's hometown,

christmas, alcohol, drink mix

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

Paul Zarzyski

Linguistics

Spitting a mouthful of clothespins like a goalie spitting teeth, the first time Mother strung curse words with God's name in vain, she was hanging sheets, the clean smell of 20 Mule Team Borax

language, bird, laundry

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

Paul Zarzyski

The Whale In My Wallet

We're talking humpbacks, not greenbacks, but I'm still sitting fat packing only his flukes - biggest fingerprints you ever saw high-fiving me or, should I say "two-hi-ing" me out of the gray

wallet, sailor, boat

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

Paul Zarzyski

Zeke Zarzyski

Zeke, hung over, with me and Liz in tow, plows his way into a faux-fern bar bistro arf-arfing his favorite cow dog yarn about the dude who strolled into a Browning, Montana

cowdog, bar, humanization

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

Paul Zarzyski

A Lesson In Animal Zen

Built for full-grown cattle, the alley-way to the squeeze chute is far more than just a Hereford hair too wide for the five-seven-ten head of calves not at all funneling smoothly into single file, doing their best worst

cattle chute, animals, cowboy

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

Paul Zarzyski

Photo Finish

Because a horse cannot see its own nose, the bell mare stares at herself mesmerized in the mirrored glass vet clinic door - fixates so firmly

race horse, trailer, vet

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

Paul Zarzyski

Cowboys & Indians

When my father does not ride in on time for supper, I track him down, find him wounded, fevered, slumped on his big hairy Ernest Borgnine forearms over his work bench in the shop across the yard.

westerns, television, tv series

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

Paul Zarzyski

Woodchuck Love

The summer after my father faded into life's final hibernation, after I consecrated with his gray remains the sturdiest sugar maples, birch, black ash and oaks in his woodlot,

death, garden, yard

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

Paul Zarzyski

Drinking With Mister Mink

A yard sale one-of-a-kinder, stuffed likely by a master cannabis gardener turned amateur taxidermist after the harvest, Mr. Mink, fastened

cannabis, drinking, fancy

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

Paul Zarzyski

Flat Crick's Mad Gourmet Poet and His Fishing Fanatic Neighbor Hold The First-Ever Polecatting Derby

When noxious fumes put the kibosh on out Bon Appetítit Christmas feast - our eyes instead of mouths watering into platefuls of spiced cognac yams

buffet, christmas, baking

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

Paul Zarzyski

Zarzyski Goes Daffy With Zupan On The Last Day Of Quacker Season

"... Partner, I don't give a gander's ass, so don't ask me what the poor folks are up to today. All I know, it's the eighth of January, worst rawboned blizzard in years - minus

ducks, hunt, snow

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

Paul Zarzyski

Escorting Grammy To The Potluck Rocky Mountain Oyster Feed At Bowman's Corner - A Love Poem

Lean Ray Krone bellers through a fat cumulus cloud of Rum-Soaked Wagonmastser Conestoga

race. spring, baking

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

Paul Zarzyski

Deer Heart (And Gentle People)

"A must cuisine for the county music purist," I tell my pal, Quinton Mush-Heart Duval, "the Q'ster," wincing as I rinse the mule deer's ticker in the sink -

dinner, hunting, heart

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

Paul Zarzyski

Zarzyski Stomachs The Oxford Special With Zimmer At The Ox Bar & Grill

Donning his bronc-stomper black hat, cockeyed the morning after reading range rhymes in Montana, Zimmer swears out loud

bar, z, brains

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

Paul Zarzyski

Red Shuttleworth's Birthday, Baseball, Boilermaker Bards Bombastic, And The Horrible, But Victorious, Morning After

His lower lip squeegees the Guinness foam from his Johnny Ringo mustache shining silver in the kitchen light where we drink

alcohol, bar, birthday

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

Paul Zarzyski

Zarzyski, Not Exactly Wild Bill Hickok

Forty-seven times my shotgun thundered, a downpour of BBs riddles the sloughs, as I wade knee-deep in Winchester hulls

duck, bullet shells, dinner

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

Paul Zarzyski

Attack Of The Box Elder Bugs - Or As Poet Greg Keeler Would Put It, "Somebody Bring Me The Goddamned Bug Book!"

Clinging to the sunny side of the house crawling, I - wired to one hundred feet of florescent orange extension cord dangling from my crippled stepladder - vacuum the outside south wall, one more battle lost to old Ma Nature.

box elder bugs, attack, exterminate

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

Paul Zarzyski

STUUFFF!

Braking for all sales - estate, yard, auction, rummage, moving, garage - as well as all thrifts - Saint Vinny's, Sally Ann's, Goodwill, Open Hands - we stop at nothing when it comes to further stuffing our cars

junk, stuff, hording