BILLIE MCCORKLE - POEMS

Billie McCorkle is a writer and traveler. She is currently working on her first novel. She has self published two zines and is working on a third. In her spare time, she reads, paints and hikes under the grey skies of Seattle. 

She Waits
​

​On land the winds do blow—for now they breathe
The dust does sting. It leaves a coat of sand
She loved the Earth gone now—dirt tastes like beets 
The dark of night makes haste, she waits for you
 
The frost of night indents the soul—tonight
She waits for you, in black the pale decide
As fate requires—the tears embrace the sky
Suspend that time in space, a cry for help
 
A sound is heard amongst the stars—behold
The bat between the clouds reveals to you
A reply arrives too late, regret and fate
Declare the end—in time she waits for you

Dreams of Jack Burney
​

​Jack Burney
your Beautiful Dreams hide
in a stream of black smoke
trailing the Chicagoland Express
 
on the outbound train riding through
the great wheat plain
 
We Listen
to Beautiful Thinkers who quietly
Tinker on the creaky train
(drinking grain alchyhol
at 3 a.m.)
 
 
We are Gautama
-Buddha
Meditating like Neruda
 
I
Kiss those hands Your prose stained hands
We breastfeed and suckle
 
I
On Tecate
You on Quetzalcoatl
 
O
 
The old man screaks
while
Curtis, my brother
Pulls the curtain clouds Apart to sneek a Peek
 
 
He Hears:
 
“Which way to San Francisca?”
The pushcart peddler bares a toothless smile
from his whole hearted soul
says
 “Li Po needs a ride”
while
Up from Mexicoland Mother Earth transforms herself
Scrub brush
Dances
 
Motherless mirages blanket the horizon
Cacti stand
-sentinels manned
The barrage of dust coats
My lungs
 
I Point up to say
 “Heaven
lies in the ground you seek”
 
Jack Burney
On the night express Enroute to Midamerica, U.S.
-Train trail rider
Your journey ends as the crossroads
portend
 
 
 

Prairie Wind 
​

​On a Kansas prairie, the winds exhaled 
gales of dust that settled
land like thick fog. Ethel rode
her Phantom Rider load beyond the wind’s
almighty grip, she honked her horn past the locust-
plagued corn that destroyed a midwest farmer.
 
The prairie wind stung her face. Covered in dust,
a barn the color of night hung on
the horizon. Ethel’s legs grew weary
with the few turns of the spokes.
The wind blew. A weathered old farmer
in blanched, patched dungarees hollered on cue,
 
hello
 
His voice rang in her ear. The wind breathed.
She stopped, eased a sweaty hand to greet
the old fella’. Devils of dust were born,
slowly, Ethel’s level voice  sliced the wind.
The dust coated word resonated
with the frustrated, broken granger,
 
hello
 
He blotted his forehead with
a checkered bandana . A clotted line
of tobacco juice dribbled down his chin.
As long as the prairie wind let loose
they remained content to remain
apart. When it stopped, Ethel went away.
 
She hollered,
goodbye