Poems for the 2024 Kansas State Fair

Summer of the Rabbit

The rabbit counts the patterns of the day
with soft eyes and ears
that turn lacey veins
to an unwavering July.
She knows me, I think, as I watch
her litter cavorting
in the gathering dusk.
I’ll plant my future in the fields, golden
with wheat, while the mother
names a leveret after every star
and tells them to hide amidst the grain
where we both reap
and we both sow.

–Maia Carlson

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Fairy Tale

The mother in her rosy cardigan,
the daughter in her sage one. Let them
untangle, let the threads become
a quilt covering them both. They dim
the lights. They make popcorn and stare
straight ahead. The mother’s left hand
in the bowl, the daughter’s right.
They time their bites, not ready
to touch. But still, here they are,
in the living room they once shared,
under this patchwork—
mother’s pink, daughter’s green,
the colors should clash
and outside this poem they do.

–Melissa Fite Johnson

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Scouts

There is more than one way
to build a fire— cabin-like, pine-like,
and there are a lot of knots—
to know, to untangle,
later, when you’re older
and a pocketknife
is just a tool (like a spoon or fork)
and not the first dangerous thing
you own, like having a snake
or rat pet or, (with knots), like
knowing the solution to a puzzle
no one else knows.

–Kevin Rabas

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Blazing Trails

Adventure begins here
with a flashlight, with fireflies
with laughter at the campfire
with friends, with neighbors
with smores and stories
and a chrysalis discovered
hanging from milkweed
with how can I help?
with a tent staked at the corners,
ready to rise on the count of three
with the joy that holds it all
with memories as full as the moon
that rests over the lake

–Traci Brimhall

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Poultry Poem, Or Ode to Wings

I don’t know how to begin to say
Randy the Rooster was the last male
we allowed in our backyard community
for aged fowl. When people ask,
we explain, It’s for the eggs, to avoid
putting in words why we continue
to pour feed and money, devoured
first by bullies, then those who get
last scraps. I’m not sure if there is
a lesson in greed or any simple joy, more
cliches we cluck, as we name each winged
neighbor. Still, it was our oldest son
who shouted, I miss Henrietta, but
I sure do love chicken wings.

–Dennis Etzel, Jr.

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Found Transcript: Typewritten by the Wind on the Heads of
Triticum Aestivum¹

We are bountiful, said the Horizon to the Skyline. We are rising,
emerging ahead, growing upright like rows of grain-filled wheat.

Every act of breaking bread begins here, in these fields—where
you and I meet. Right here, in Kansas, where souls are weighed
in bundles, not grams.

–Huascar Medina

¹bread wheat

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Butter Fingers

2 a.m., and I admit it.
I love him. I know this because he’s here,
and he wants cookies.

In the kitchen, I measure
with my heart, scoop
and toss flour and sugar
with my hands, pinch
baking soda, sprinkle salt, splash
a capful of vanilla, squeeze
the butter into pieces like play-doh,
mix and knead and ball and bake.

By 2:30, he loves me too.

–Linzi Garcia

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Horses are Magic

“Horses are magic,” says an old friend of mine,
And I’m convinced his thinking is right in line.
His statement is one I heartily endorse,
`Cause people of all ages can appreciate the horse.
When we observe a pretty animal equine,
It can cause a person’s eyes to shine.
When handicapped children have a chance to ride,
It gives a healthy sense of motion and pride.
The horse is a beautiful animal to behold,
A connection to our pioneering days of old.
He can be a workin’ partner for a cowboy’s doings,
Or the source of joy that a fun ride brings.
As wise people have said of this resource:
“Best thing for the inside of a person is the outside of a horse.”

–Ron Wilson, Poet Lariat

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Slicing a Cantaloupe

Only now, some years after your death
do I dare cut against nature’s lines
into chunks or squares, or, worse, purchase
precut convenience packed in plastic.

Both of these, sins against your ritual
of halving first, scooping out the juicy
seeds, then tracing the cleaving of the rind
with a knife, slicing coral crescent moons,
each sliver a smile on the plate.

–Janice Northerns

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Jiggety Jog

A rear part of the hog
is called the ham,
and behind the neck
grows a Boston butt.
You understand how
to buy the jowl and hock,
grill a loin, like a glutton suck
trotters out of a crock
in a tavern while you swill
stout beer and belch.
From farrow to finish,
snout to tail, farm to meal –
it’s natural for hogs to squeal.

–Lori Brack

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How to Change the Future

Start with lightning striping the pulse from an oak.
When the rain stops, find the chain saw, level what’s left
into a perch for crows, leaves, even you, until you realize
this isn’t a stump but a squirrel, pleading for food
and freedom. Carve away all that isn’t squirrel.

Take a photo of the blue ribbon around her neck,
her face engrained with lines of light that used to be
rings of time next to the sunflower made from broken
dishes at what felt like the end of the world, and a bowl
thrown in speed and ecstasy into what will hold

the cherries of the future we will all savor at home
where a squirrel pauses at the scars of tree and fire.

–Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg

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Thunder Ball

Have you met my market lamb? His name is Thunder Ball.
I’m going to take him to State Fair, later in the Fall.
Right now, we’re having lots of fun. I walk him every day,
And jump him over hurdles. That’s how we like to play!
We practice standing for the Judge, real still with muscles braced.
I know I’ll be so proud of him, no matter how he’s placed.
He may not make it to the top of the class he’s in,
But we will shine at showmanship. That’s where we will win!

–Betty Burlingham

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Wild Clay

Late October, fingers chilled and cramped as you dig
six inches down with a hand spade to plant tulip bulbs,
and you swear under your breath at the Kansas clay soil,
how hard it is, how unevenly it settles, making the backyard
patio tilt and crack a little more every year, but the next day,
you see the undulating coils of a sea-urchin-shaped jar
by Richard Zane Smith, a Wyandot artist, the polychrome
colors like sunset, red-orange-yellow melding into purple,
and it reminds you of a raku-fired vase of your mother’s,
how she left the end of each coil a slender snake’s tail,
winding down the body, so you call her and she’s learning
how to harvest wild clay, to slake, sieve, and reclaim it,
and you realize what you were cursing is precisely the stuff
that made all that beauty, will break into blossom next spring.

–Hyejung Kook

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Consider the Lilies

We are at war,
still, I consider the lilies of the field
who toil not, neither do they spin.
Roses interrupt my march though doom
headlines warn there’s no time to stop and smell
or to marvel at Black-eyed Susans
that ask only sun, soil and rain in return for beauty.
These pauses for gratitude quiet
the cacophony of my battle-weary days.
and before I trudge to the next skirmish,
dressed in my Kevlar best,
I nod thanks.

–Annette Hope Billings

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“Not of words but of deeds”
after E.M. Tiffany

blue jackets under blue skies
today, knowing that the rain will come
tomorrow, to water the crops, to water the cattle
the future of agriculture lies in
patience, persistence
knowing the time will come to
take off the jacket and roll up the sleeves
drive the tractor, call the hogs
bring in the hay and
hold it all close – this
a faith born of growing seasons
for another generation
of future farmers

–Macy Davis

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The Dairy Plant Shuffle

See now: when the sun appears as a slice in the brine tinged sky,
Curious dirt-dark and side-slanted eyes track the drowsy
Progress of scuffed rubber boots faithfully trekking by.
Gleaming pasteurizers grumble as they stretch
Awake to fill cracks of rumbling hunger that awaits–
They sterilize, sanitize, baptize the milk anew.
Vats of steaming milk swirl to heat and then cool.
Pearls of curds form to be whisked away
Against the ache of muscles strained, weary, and beat.
These sturdy forearms stack and flip to make neat
The choreography planned for working hands. As the day
S t r e t c h e s with more cream to separate,
A heavy-eyed craftsman quietly ruminates:
What is art if not the sweat earned in creation?

–Abi Whitney

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Horizon Eyes

Every goat
captures light
with their horizon
eyes, pupils steadied,
parallel to the ground
where light edges into
periphery. To carry light
like this is an ancient art.
Perhaps then, the reason
goats grew alongside us
over thousands of years,
through every rise and fall
of our human history,
was to remind us how
to carry light like this—
how to let more light in.

–Mercedes Lucero

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If I Could Be Any Vegetable, I’d Be—

thinning in the middle, back of the drawer cuke,
shriveling green darkening, host for tomorrow’s
fuzzy molds. If I could be any vegetable—
crookneck sizzling with brother onions, heat-wilted
yum mush; jalapeño tingling fingertips, lips;
tomato hidden under leaves seeding sprouts, next
year’s volunteer. If I can be, I’ll be the beans’
snapping dance; corn cob, fat worm harbor; broccoli,
cauliflower, crisscross vein cleansers; tapered root,
brown lump, tunic-skinned bulb, underground hiders. I’ll
dye counters pink, stand a singular stalk, wilt green
in vinegar pots, cabbage the house to stink. I’ll
fill your belly and make next year’s green, be any
vegetable, slimy, crunchy, thick . . . Okra! Lima beans! Hero—
as long as there’s dirt and water and anything that needs to feed.

–Laura Lee Washburn

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Dominion

That Dad named his cows wasn’t unusual:
how could he not name something
he so lovingly fed? He named me, too, &
17 years later my baby sister.
She knew each cow’s name by heart,
told a friend who came to dinner he was eating Chuck.
Looks like a T-bone, my friend said. Right, she said
with all of her Polly Pocket voice. From Chuck, the cow.
Daddy lets me go to the butcher with him.
My friend put down his fork & we all laughed.
Dessert was eaten, dishes were washed.
Dad is too old now to raise anything.
It’s a kind of claiming, isn’t it, to name what you love?
So simple, it seems, to feed on what’s yours.

–Lisa Allen

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