Poetry by Bruce Morton

                       Anssi Koskinen CC



Exile At Radenbeck


It was between them and us, the big chill.
I sat in a fallow sugar beet field

Serving as a uniformed reminder
That military intelligence is--

Weird. Stupidity becomes inanity,
Which in its time becomes profanity.

To triangulate radio signals
Equipment must be in working order.

We listen to them listening to us
Listening to them listening to us,

Of course, to locate them will reveal to them
That we are here. We are all where we are.

WTF?  Not a thing to do but to be--
Occupy space, a solitary watcher.

Hunker in a sort-of-bunker, metal shack
Riveted against the wind, no windows.

Ferocious guard dog, Fritz the schaeffer hund,
Would only bare his teeth to fetch thrown sticks.

Did have a rifle, M-16, army issue;
Could not see daylight through the barrel rust.

Keep the door shut, no problem, no daylight.
No daylight, no problem, no ammo clip.

Sat and slept in shifts kept on the sofa.
Read the Winds of War, slowly, an epic, while

Enjoying the amenities—hot plate,
Cans of ravioli, bottled water,

State-of-the-art new electric outhouse,
The evaporating piss and fried shit.

These are the olive drab memories I
Conjure when I am thanked for my service.





Nature Porn


We must go out of our way,
Where most will not venture,
The road slick washboard gumbo
In the breaks by the Big Muddy.
The fall cottonwoods and aspen
Have gone gold against the river.

Long ago it was the voyageurs.
Now it is the voyeurs who come
To watch the rut, squint peering
Through tripod scopes exposed,
In the open on knolls instead
Of peeping through holes in a wall.

The elk are there, they graze, ruminating
About lush grass and the business at hand
Rather than what we onlookers demand.
The big bulls stand defiant on the edges,
Heads cocked, each antler a valentine.
No bugles, no charges; tranquility reigns.

We are disappointed—no fucking elk.





One Summer In San Angelo


Memory and libido wilt
With time, needless to say.
It was hot—griddle hot.
There was drought, we could see

By the widening cracks
On the floor of the reservoir.
This was dry country, dry county,
Tom Green County. We never
Did take time or trouble to learn
Just who the hell Tom Green was.

But whoever he was we knew 
He could not buy himself a shot 
Of whiskey or a beer unless
He drove over his county line.

For excitement we would watch 
Crickets jump out of the urinals. 
My buddy and I, we would rave on
While we mourned Janice and Jimi
As we choked the life out of longnecks
And pissed the summer away.

​

Bruce Morton splits his time between Montana and Arizona. His volume of poems, Simple Arithmetic and Other Artifices, was published in 2015. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in various magazines and anthologies including, most recently, Muddy River Poetry Review, Mason Street Review, The Lake (UK), Main Street Rag, Nixes Mate Review, Grey Sparrow Journal, Sin Fronteras/Writers Without Borders, and Blue Unicorn. He was formerly Dean of Libraries at Montana State University.

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