Poetry

Daniel By Alissa Roberts-Dedic

Published 2006 Carillon, University of Nebraska at Kearney Student Journal

Because of the autobiographical content in this poem, I have changed the names and information of the people involved to protect their privacy.

Eight years ago you went away turkey hunting

on the October afternoon your car rolled.

For twenty-five minutes, Steven gave you CPR.

He has moved out of his parents’ house;

he has job as an electrician now.

No one drinks Mountain Dew with him.

He eats alone at Taco John’s.

You planned on the air force.

Audrey’s voice trembled as she read

Daniel is traveling tonight on a plane

at your memorial service in the high school gym.

I wish you could come back for an hour or so

To know I went to college, to meet my boyfriend.

You two would have loved talking about hunting.

I am not the porcelain doll little sister.

Though I was dropped into pieces,

I am nearly alive again.

Ghost Ships By Alissa Roberts-Dedic

Published 2006 Carillon, University of Nebraska at Kearney Student Journal

They treasured potato tubers, pressed moist, black Irish soil around the potato root. The harvest of 1845, Irish peasants uncovered potato stones. Moldy leaves spread the Blight. Landlords knocked at the doors of stone cottages; no potatoes to pay room and board. The tenants’ rent rotted in the ground. “Burn the house down,” the landlord would say, as torches met the hay roof. The flames poured like rain. Irish peasants like gray shadows trudge with red heads hung low into the mist. In a few months, their faces would be yellow like the dead leaves in autumn. Famine Fever was the murderer of children. They ate only green cabbage; some choked down rotten potatoes left in the ground. “Don’t worry. There will be a better harvest next year,” wives would say to their husbands. 1846 came with poisonous waves that crashed onto the island. The Corn Laws created a stone wall around the island. No food was imported for the starving working class to eat. Coffin ships gathered at the harbors, promising a safe trip to America. The ships were as rotten as the potatoes in the ground. Ghost ships creaked under the weight of one million Irish emigrating to America, Canada, Britain, and Australia. They escaped from a prison of stone fences and rent. New York offered “We Don’t Hire Irish” signs and slums, condemned apartments with five families to a room. The Black Famine, buimhis, killed one million Irish. Blood on the hands of the British who closed their ears to pleas of Robert Peel and dying children in the streets of Dublin.

Lame Johnny Creek by Alissa Roberts-Dedic

Lame Johnny didn’t come with the wagon train

Rode into town at dusk one evening in 1876

No story No last name

Showed some skill with numbers

Homestake Gold Mine hired Johnny as a bookkeeper

Johnny had a wooden leg that clunked on

The wood walk ways. He wore a brown hat and suit

Shook hands with the businessmen, tipped his hat

To the ladies a long wave like gesture Ladies first

Stride clunk glide clunk on the way to work.

Never seen in the bars playing cards or

Drinking whiskey with cowboys on Saturday nights

He dined with bankers and their wives

Hobbled home before coffee and cake

Had to rest his achin’ right leg

Cowboys stumbled home like Johnny’s limp

Singing Irish songs, gamblers collected poker chips

Silence wrapped the town like a blanket

That’s when Johnny would go riding.

Polio or childhood accident no one knew

Johnny had the limp in Texas when he

Was known as Cornelius Donahue, horse thief

Cowboy whose limp named him lame

The gang called him leader as they

Captured Homestake’s gold

Hid away in King’s Ridge Cave

To loot the Stagecoach lines

Between Hot Springs and Buffalo Gap

Large spreads of cattle and horses for 15 miles

Between Hot Springs and Buffalo Gap

Temptation called an Arabian with silky black mane

Brown eyes peeked over a black scarf

Under barbed wire Johnny would go creeping

Dodged the prickly pears and yucca plants

Whistled to horses their noses to the ground

As they munched buffalo grass. Come with me,

Arabian, to Denver, to trolleys, to circuses,

Streets crowded with people.

Who caught Lame Johnny on

A starless night? Passé of John Wayne

Kind of men who applied the law as they like.

Wanted horse thief in the stranger’s hand.

They hung Lame Johnny by the branch of a tree north

Of Buffalo Gap. The branch bent low

131 years later the creek below named for Lame Johnny

Where a headstone once read:

Pilgrim Pause!

You’re standing on

The molding clay of Limping John

Tread lightly, stranger, on this sod

For if he moves, you’re robbed

By God.

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