"With us it's always a feast or a famine." --Willa Cather, One of Ours Store fronts are closed coffins, here, their pine-boarded windows webbed with dust. A transient wind blows and hobo-dirt, crossing a poor man' s fields, leaves upon the rails of steel sky. Stony streets snore beneath the wheels of crawling trucks and tractors. Each week the cars seem fewer, and the souls who drive these narrow roads are worms earth-locked in a Mason jar It's the dying who stay. Anguished by the barbs of death and debt, old farmers are weathered posts. Gravity pulls the ladies earthward--see them bent in their gardens, the avalanche of their bodies. Life to all is a slow waltz around short blocks, a nodding of heads. It's the shuffle of cards at the corner tavern, voices murmuring, and the dance of sprightly weeds upon graves. Reprinted with permission from Before We Lost Our Ways Copyright © 1996 by Mark Sanders Hurãkan/College of the Mainland

SITTING ON FOTH'S ROOF, WITH BEER by Mark Sanders

for Kelly Dirt hung upon the air like a tan curtain The auburn sun, a yolk on a hot, greased pan of prairie, popped and darkness oozed. Sputter of diesel pump. A yowling dog. Drone of heat, trucks far off. on and on, on the blacktop. "Let's go to the roof," you had said, to fill idle time with more than talk. We crawled out an upstairs window, shinnied up a steep pitch of wood shingles. Roped the cooler to the chimney and sat there--nine beers, ten. In the dark, maples sipped a dark draft The leaves chatted and waltzed. "We're two cans of beer, Bud," you said, meaning what we had left. I thought of that stale something in us drunk, stale-something. You'd be married in a week, and I'd be gone. We're sour mash, friend. I slid down, left you straddling the peak, can held high, toasting the night. Reprinted with permission from Before We Lost Our Ways Copyright © 1996 by Mark Sanders Hurãkan/Collee of the Mainland

ANNA CERNIK'S DIARY: OF DAUGHTERS AND SONS by Mark Sanders

Papa came in this morning angry at the winter. He had been with one of his calving cows most the night, had to drive her to the barn through snow to his knees. and the calf's hind legs coming first, the wet of birth freezing. Mama in the barn held the lantern for Papa as he worked. I held the cow's head to calm and steady her. But Papa could not pull the calf himself, it was lodged so. Then the cow fell to her knees, rolled over to her side, her great belly heaving and heavy with her death. Mama, feeding little Tina who slept through it, said Papa would not drink his coffee, eat his breakfast, but went out early to chore. Then he came back in, angry at the winter. Said over and over he wishes he'd had a son to help him pull, needed more muscle to do what last night had to be done. Over and over said he was angry at thc winter. Reprinted with permission from Before We Lost Our Ways Copyright 1996 by Mark Sanders Hurãkan/College of the Mainland