NELS HANSON - POEMS

Nels Hanson grew up on a small farm in the San Joaquin Valley of California and has worked as a farmer, teacher and contract writer/editor. His fiction received the San Francisco Foundation’s James D. Phelan Award and Pushcart nominations in 2010, 2012, 2014 and 2016. His poems received a 2014 Pushcart nomination, Sharkpack Review’s 2014 Prospero Prize, and 2015 and 2016 Best of the Net nominations.

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       Upside-Down Is Right-Side-Up Upside-Down


A mitten grows fingers to match
its willful thumb. Each day a buck’s
risen hunch nurses at the branched
antlers until they disappear in one
 
theorem. In pond water the peacock
catches 50 blue-green eyes watching
from its plumes. Sad coyote starving
forgets and chases the roadrunner
 
while rack on rack 10,000 pumps
of the princess stare at the closet’s
polished floor. The dreaming pilot’s
jet bomber takes off without her,
 
leaving white, then gold and pink
contrails, odd flight plan she almost
can decipher. When the poet falls
silent as snow pages turn to windows
 
with bars all the words can’t bend
to save the stranger with black coat
and hat stumbling for black woods.
Halloweens in the mountain castle
 
a dead king called “The Enchanted
Hill” lovely maiden and her unicorn
in the meadow stitched with daises
rouse at a monster’s ghost trying to
 
enter the tapestry. As the sprinter’s
chest expands to break yellow tape
lanes reverse, backward the slowest
runner wins the trophy. Nightmare:
 
our President wakes in sweat, certain
he’s been elected President. Finally
he recalls, showers, shaves, shirt, tie,
the fine suit as striped as a prisoner’s.
 

                           Lightning Strike


She didn’t want the kids to
suffer. He ran about as far
as he could run. Why’d she
leave Tipton? Her mother
lives in Tucson, so I took her
old dog. Is that far? South
of Phoenix. What weather
do they have? It’s hot with
rain in summer, turns green
from thunderstorms. Father
saw a lightning bolt strike
an end-post and shoot all
down the vineyard wire, just
like that split each stump in
half, like with a paring knife.
Well, sooner or later we all
get struck. My yes, and now
it’s hit pretty close to home.
 

                                The Werewolf


I heard the primal howl
older than any mad dog’s
scream terrorize my human
 
ears and next I knew all
was white and red, snow,
blood, my blood. The risen
 
full moon bleached blank
the barrens I’d crossed for
my true love rumor said
 
lived secretly in the farthest
north, her castle made of ice.
Now my face wore fur, my
 
mouth lion’s honed incisors,
hands, feet bare, unfrozen,
comfortable, well-armored
 
tiger’s sharpest claws. With
nostrils flared from a 1,000
too pungent scents I smelled
 
and hunted one only, sweet,
hot, salty, disguised in living
flesh. A new different hunger
 
led me past dark pines, on
the trail of the lone caribou
till blinding day I woke, no
 
boots or gloves, down parka,
wild taste burning my raw
tongue so I ate snow. I stood
 
shirtless, bare-chested, and
upright trudged on for love
before next month’s moon
 
when on my palm I’ll see
the Gypsy’s pentagram, my
Pole Star and silver bullet.