I spend the summers up high in the mountains where it’s cool. I spend most of my time with the bighorn sheep. The rams like to fight on perilous cliffs; I enjoy wrestling with them till they bleat in surrender then I let them go, good fun. At night they huddle together and I try to lay down among them but always they keep a small distance away. The mountain sheep are ungrateful. They are ungrateful even though I have saved them from big cats more times than I can count. Too often I see a cat stalking towards them and chuck it off the edge screeching, or get them with a rock till they look like smashed berries, and yes I enjoy it, but they clearly benefit don’t they? Do those bleating idiots thank me? No. they just stare off into the distance nibbling on roots and mountain weeds. Sometimes I think of punting them all into the ravine below but I would miss them and their stupid faces, so I sit and nibble roots with them and we stare at the mountains for whatever reason.
At night I hear wolves howling, the prettiest sound. This night I try to howl with them. When they hear me, they stop. I try to tell them don’t stop, but there is nothing now—only the wind. Frustrated, I grab one of the sheep to lay my head on; it bleats in protest before giving up. I look to the stars until I am asleep.
At daybreak I go down the mountain to get something good to munch. I go to the river to snatch some salmon but there is the brown bear that always wants to tussle with me over the best spot for fish. We wrestle for an hour; though the truth is I prolong it for my amusement, before I throw the bear into the current. The bear goes off roaring into the distance. Sorry buddy, looks like its berries and roots for you.
After I have feasted on many fish, I head back up the mountain. As I climb the mountain I think about the bear, who is not as strong or as fast as it used to be. This concerns me for some reason. Maybe I will let it win next time. Strange thing to be thinking.
While going on my way, I run into an elk with its leg in a man trap. It kicks and whines like crazy. I walk up, and even though the elk tries to kick me, I grab the man trap by the teeth and pry it open. The elk leaps away awkwardly into the distance. Not so much as a thank you or anything. Fine.
I take the man trap to my cave and add it to the collection where I keep my shiny bottles and cameras and man bones. (Not my doing, the bones, but I keep them anyhow.) It’s too hot to linger in the cave though, and I head back up the mountain brushing myself with a prized man comb.
The rams are at it again. This time my heart is not into it, so I just watch while brushing myself. When night falls and the sheep lay down, I hear the wolves howling. I want to howl too, but I know it will just silence them so I just listen. I just listen, and it is humiliating because I know the sheep hear me weeping. The wolves are howling and I am just weeping.
en I need a break from Defoe and Richardson (as I sometimes do), I like to read Western writers. Not writers of Westerns, mind you, like Zane Grey or Louis L’Amour or Owen Wister (that’s my dad’s thing, and his dad’s), but rather contemporary authors such as Robert Wrigley and James Galvin who write in and about the American West. I recently read Galvin’s Resurrection Update, Collected Poems 1975-97. I loved his book The Meadow, and his poetry is very similar in its treatment of people carving out a living in the harsh beauty of the rugged West. He plays with themes of death, survival, family, and tempered spirituality. His careful representations of rugged landscapes and his verbal economy make his writing an inviting frontier that any reader interested in poetry about the West can and should explore.
onging to a now long forgotten country. The dictionaries themselves represent the three religions the nation was looking at for both a sense of direction and purpose. The pretend dictionaries were for the religions of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam respectively. Each dictionary’s entries act as short stories of sorts , and the three books tell often the same story differently. The writing itself is a bizarre magical realism akin to something like Gabriel García Márquez mixed with the textual playfulness of Vladimir Nabokov. The book also came in both male and female editions with differing passages. As the author explains in the epilogue; people should closely compare notes with each other on the differences, and in this way be brought together. it is a truly unique little book that is definitely worth checking out.
se Farris, Poetry Editor: 
ISU's student Journal of Creative Works 