Blackbird Archive
← v9n1, Spring 2010
Poetry · Volume 9, Number 1

Not Whiskey

Drew Blanchard

At dusk—west of Patch Grove—

two bison become an electric fence,

a fox, a question about crossing the street,

yellow circles of fallen leaves, a flower

arrangement that turns love again to lust.

          Four hundred miles east the bison,

lost in wandering, witness a son

bankrupt a bar, bust the town of Black Wolf,

fold the farm as metal folds in train wrecks.

The bison, alone again in wandering,

are not box knives, not crows,

not a soiled sheet, a trailer-park-storm.

They do not go into the woods alone.

They are not a last dance, drunk,

not a blue jay, not whiskey, not a time clock.

naturerural-lifefamily
Drew Blanchard

Drew Blanchard’s first collection of poems, Winter Dogs , is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry (spring, 2011). His writing has appeared in Best New Poets 2008 (Samovar Press) and literary magazines, including Notre Dame Review , Guernica / a magazine of art politics , Gulf Stream Magazine , and Meridian . Blanchard is a two-time recipient of an Academy of American Poets prize. He holds an MFA in poetry from The Ohio State University and is a PhD candidate at the University of Wisconsin– Milwaukee where he serves as managing editor of Cream City Review . Photo by Morgan Denton