thistles stretch their prickly arms afar
thistles stretch their prickly arms afar
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Larry Beckett

Amarillo
from U.S. Rivers

Seven Cities of Gold / Pantex Nuclear Plant

Coronado, if
I ever find
Cibola,
the seven cities of gold:
across the Llano Estacado,
only
pueblos, and that friar’s lie,
Quivira,
across the Palo Duro,
only the yellow

rose of Pantex:
seventy-two hours
a week, he watches
that there’s no breach
in the warheads,
pits, plutonium, over
the Ogallala aquifer,
Texas water,
under the prairies,
one thousand centuries.

Larry Beckett was born in Glendale, California, in 1947. His poetry has been published in Zyzzyva, Field, Margie, Salamander, the anthology Portland Lights from Nine Lights Press, and his first book, Songs and Sonnets from Rainy Day Women Press, was favourably reviewed in the San Francisco Chronicle. Beat Poetry, a study of the San Francisco renaissance, was published by Beatdom Books. Paul Bunyan, a book-length poem (Smokestack Books, 2015), received positive reviews in Zyzzyva and The Recusant. He performed the poem at the UK’s Ledbury Poetry Festival. Other work: Wyatt Earp, a novel in prose poetry (Alternating Current Press, 2020). The complete U.S. Rivers was performed in a choral reading by a company of actors, and recorded. His work has been commended by Jack Hirschman, David Meltzer, Tom Clark, Ann Charters, David Young, and U.S. Poet Laureates W. S. Merwin and Charles Wright. Beckett lives in Portland, Oregon.

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