POETRY

Failed Index

By Joe Wilkins     VOLUME 59 No. 2

Vertical Divider

See screen door & boot scraper. See sky-
blue Datsun 720 with rusted
wheel wells. See also tires, retread. For dust
see rooster tail, windstorm, father, grandfather, little
neighbor girl. Prayer chain, p. __.
Palm Sunday, p. __. See also Mysteries,
the Sorrowful. For hunger see red
Kool-Aid, garden cucumber, buttered
saltine, beef gravy on everything. Cf. dry rain,
nine years of drought, widow’s
weeds. Cf.  blood sunset, river of stars, ridge
to ridge the coyotes calling. For grief see
quiet, constant, suddenly knee-
buckling. See also George Strait’s entire
discography & “All Apologies.” Books, viz., somewhere
& else, respite & help. Funeral
casserole, p. __. Farm foreclosures, page __, __,
& __. For foxtail see flood, useless fruits of. For flood see
gulley washer, qq.v. heat lightning, hail, power out
for hours. See through the shadows.
See at the Formica kitchen table every hand
held. For kerosene lamp see hand in which the flame
is cupped. See mother. See also single mother. For disambiguation
see bone-tired, luck, love, ferocity.

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JOE WILKINS is the author of two novels, The Entire Sky and Fall Back Down When I Die ; a memoir, The Mountain and the Fathers; and five collections of poetry, including Pastoral, 1994 and When We Were Birds. A finalist for the First Novel Prize from the Center For Fiction, the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award, the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, and the Orion Book Award, Wilkins has won the Oregon Book Award, the Montana Book Award, the GLCA New Writers Award, the Pushcart Prize, and four High Plains Book Awards. Born and raised north of the Bull Mountains of eastern Montana, he lives with his family in the foothills of the Coast Range of Oregon.


VOLUME 59 No. 2