Ghost Buffalo

by Peter Anderson Succubus from the tobacco leaf, sometimes I wish you would turn me loose, but you have your ways and you know where to find me, usually at night on some mountain-town sidewalk after a few beers.  You know how to get my attention, like the older but attractive woman stealing a french fry from my plate at the bar and girl.  You love to flaunt yourself.  And I am all too willing to entertain your flauntings.  Oh, Nico.  You are like the Harley-leathered bartender in that downtown Montrose tavern, one of the few places where they still let you in.  Like her, you are both attractive and dangerous, and maybe that's the appeal.  Or maybe it's how you leave me with my thoughts as I breathe you in.  How you dance your night-sky tango when I let you go.  It's true, I love to undo your slinky belt and slide off your see-through negligee.  And you smell so good when you are naked and ready to burn.  And I love the anticipation of lighting you up.  And how you disapp

A poem of mine entitled "Deconstruction" in Best American Poetry, edited by Natasha Tretheway, due out in September.   Also due out in September: Nasty Women, and Unapologetic Anthology of Irreverent Verse, Lost Horse Press Aug 10: I'll be doing a reading in Edwards for the good folks at the Rocky Mountain Land Library Aug 26: I'll be co-teaching with Jodie Hollander at the Solarium for the Western Colorado Forum, 10-1, and doing a reading that evening at 8 pm at Lithic Books in Fruita, during the Jack Mueller Festival. Sept 15-16: I'll be teaching a day-long workshop in Salida, and reading at Book Haven, I believe the night before. It appears I've emerged from my hermitage.

I've been asked to produce a large painting of the Wailing Wall for my nephew and his wife, who are Orthodox Jews.   As I've never been, they sent several photographs of the angle they prefer, and asked, with a bit of a grin, as I'm of Syrian/Lebanese heritage, to leave the mosques in the background out of the painting. This led me to some google searching, only to discover that yes, indeed, many modern artists' rendition of the Western Wall is depicted this way, devoid of context or historical background, as it were. In a strange coincidence, at the time they asked, I was actively writing a cento --harvesting lines from various poems and songs on the subject of  walls.