Featured Poet: Red Shuttleworth

We have an extra special treat for today's blog: a poem by friend of Plains Song Review, Red Shuttleworth.

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Infernal Fantast

It's a whiskey-stammer evening
northeast of Norfork,
west of Winside:
a blood-mucus horizon sun.
Hot wind stirs dry grass.
Barn rats screech,
scurry for poison
in trampled-hay corners.
So this is the dance
at trail's end...
steers sold for whiskey,
counterfeit frontier maps,
Virginia tobacco
to lodge between gum and lip.
You're in my arms, sugar,
with our kids bedded down.
Innocence and lust,
we whirl in sultry circles.
So this is the onward
stumble at full vision.
Before we sleep,
I pray to be
a silver-blue sunrise horse
at gallop against
a barb wire fence line.

_______________

Red Shuttleworth and his wife and children lived in Fairbury and Winside in the eighties. Red’s Western Settings received the first Spur Award for Poetry in 2001 from Western Writers of America. He was named “Best Living Western Poet” in 2007 by True West magazine. Red will shortly be seen in Minnetonka Review and has poems set to appear in RATTLE's special Western/Cowboy poetry issue and Weber: The Contemporary West. Red currently lives in Moses Lake, Washington.

Look forward to seeing more from Red in the future!