Vol. 1 / Issue 1
Une revue littéraire et culturelle bilingue
Vol. 2 / Issue 2
Photograph of Two Men On Buffalo Skull Hill, 1892
by John Dos Passos Coggin
Like farmers counting their first
harvest won from the hardscrabble West,
like homesteaders hammering the last
nail of their prairie cabin before winter,
these men glory in their self-reliance.
Adjusting, readjusting their trophy stance.
Stepping onto a skull for stability.
Atop their necropolis, they remember
when the nation’s fathers blew the bugle
charging them west. Their .50 caliber rifle
barrage from trains, from horseback, from
prone position on a prairie dog mound.
It snuffed out their directional hearing and
broke their collar bones, but damn, the stories.
Saloons rolling with gawkers at the buffalo guns.
From Shenandoah to the Pacific ranges,
the geyser of buffalo blood erupted higher
than any Texas oil gusher. The prairie,
once a caravan of mothers, calves, and bulls
thundering, bellowing for their territory,
now steeped in pools of red silence.
Then another harvest. Of skeletons.
Ten dollars for one ton of dried bones,
the fuel for sugar and fertilizer factories.
Children picking light bones for pennies.
After they’re kings of Michigan and gods of capital,
these men will see Lakota hauntings. Bedridden,
suckin’ bootleg whiskey through a hose, they’ll
fight off the ghost of a wolf that died of hunger.
Searching for buffalo, the wolf found a fawn
skeleton picked clean by turkey vultures.
Now though, in the camera flash, they feel a soul
stronger than the buffalo’s. They take a knee
before the halo of Manifest Destiny.
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Buckwheat shuffles across the stage, lugging
his backbreaker of an accordion with a smile
that could stop a war. He shakes his free hand
like a tambourine. Electric boogaloo begins.
All powers. All pretense. They incinerate
in Buckwheat’s grease fire of soul. Sweat drops
from his brow and stokes his sixteenth notes.
Used to be I had the blues but no song, I tell him.
Just my daily bone of contention stuck in my throat.
It can be dat way sometimes, says Buckwheat.
Gimme your closet full o’ beige suits, he says,
and I’ll churn ‘em into brown butter.
Bring out those pinstripes, too,
I’ll show you they’re just jail bars.
Gimme your jackhammerin’ anxieties,
I’ll play ‘em so it sounds like la la music.
Tonight, I say, I’m gonna swim Mississippi River.
Tonight, I’ma strut like a tom turkey. Bubble
on the dance floor like butter on a skillet.
New Orleans is nigh, he says,
and we’re walkin’ tonight!
Ask me how much money I make, I’ll ask you
what you’re cookin’ for dinner.
Show me your big car. Show me your big house.
I’ll tell you the lies my cat said today.
Walkin’ to New Orleans with Buckwheat Zydeco
by John Dos Passos Coggin
John Dos Passos Coggin is a writer based in Alexandria, Virginia. His poetry has appeared in Pangyrus, Cathexis Northwest Press, and Half and One. He co-manages the John Dos Passos literary estate.