Saturday, January 23, 2016

Roland Sodowsky- A Poem



Proteus

sailed in last night from parts west
Wichita, Boise, someplace out there 

and on a whim over the neighbor’s house

bodied from cumulonimbus to water
split into 6 billion raindrops     hit the roof
tore a hole     tossed a tarn in the attic
ran down    soaked the Persian rug    back on top
gathered to endless sheet flat as you please

gleefulled down the shingles     eaves trough
transmogrified to noisy snake    slithered
toward the downspout    right-angled in

between our houses reformed to pond
surged across the yard    percolated the dirt
drenched roots rocks    giggled at fleeing worms
seeped below and through our walls

chortled like Loki into the basement
under the dryer     outraged an heirloom trunk
ruined a mattress    floated litter box to sump   
pool-altered    resnaked (skinnier this time)

writhed up through the pipe and outside    laked    
laughed with the frogs    berserked the gutter   
launched forty garbage cans    roiled into creek
   
swamp some cars he thought as he rivered
whack a bridge    next week what?    waterspout
avalanche    herd the damned seals    ice cubes



Roland Sodowsky grew up on a small ranch in western Oklahoma.  He has three degrees from Oklahoma State University and studied Old High German as a Fulbright Scholar in Germany.  He has taught linguistics, literature, and creative writing at OSU, the University of Calabar in Nigeria, the University of Texas, Sul Ross State University, and Missouri State University. He has published poetry, short stories, or novellas in Atlantic Monthly, American Literary Review, Glimmer Train, Midwest Quarterly,  and many other literary magazines.  His collection of short stories, Things We Lose (U. Missouri Pr), won the Associated Writing Programs' Award for Short Fiction.  He received the National Cowboy Hall of Fame Short Fiction Award for Interim in the Desert (TCU Pr), the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines-General Electric Award for fiction, and has been a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts award.  Now retired from Missouri State, he and his wife, the poet Laura Lee Washburn, live in Pittsburg, Kansas when he, his brother, and his son are not engaged in a continuing battle with the mesquites and cedars on their family homestead.


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