Ken Hada is a fourth generation Oklahoman, descendant of Danish and Hungarian immigrants: Gypsy poets, barn dance aficionados, art lovers, amateur philosophers, wheat farmers, preachers, teachers and common-sense craftsmen.

“These poems, acting as spare parts themselves, go into the making of one smooth-running, powerful engine.”

 - Diane Glancy

Author of Pushing the Bear

The Angel of Monica

by Katie Longofono

Oh newlywed girl celebrating in sweats,
you have been had!
I’ve followed you under
awnings, falling back
in the dusk of doorways
as you pause.

I watched you peek anxiously
over your polished shoulder at my footfalls
lurking at your heel down the aisle,
saw your distraction and reengagement
with duties to a yellow-haired match.
You must have felt my sickly sweet breath
on your neck as you left the reception.

You could not miss my offering
printed on a urine-soaked stick.

You practiced Greek hospitality,
presenting feasts of green knit blankets
and bassinets in a marvelous spread.
I reclined gladly on your pillows,
palming dates from a tray.
You did not notice the dwindling;
so glad were you two.

When the dates had been eaten
and your barrels ran dry,
I flipped the vacancy sign.
You awoke to find the calendar finished
and your child in a box
smaller than your palm.

Years Young

by Katie Longofono

Consider yourself a stranger
locked in an underground cage.
You find your throat choked
with glittering insects
and dirt when you breathe.

Your closest kindred wait for you,
watch for your face
glinting in the eye of pins
and the sway of buttons.
I’ve heard their wails
across the ocean of America,
hot sobs faltering into the night

and I step back.
You’ve pooled too close.

Distant relatives mark up their skin
for you; they etch letters
down their arms
and envision your hair.

I’ve seen their sparrows
carrying you home,
ink pieces of you seeping
through skin, hugging to blood,
finding a new cage
in circulating.

Creationism

by Katie Longofono

So
in the
beginning
ants rode tricycles
into ruts, building the
mesa valleys of the south &
turning their backs on the east.
There, other anthills were going up.
Aphids were thriving. Starlight was strengthening.

Meteors came, canceling out mail and interfering
with late-night television programming. Clouds grew
weary and wept over precipices, flooding the riverbeds. Dirt
sluiced away to reveal a great canyon, worked into existence by the ants.

It was natural, then, that the land should vomit her dogs
to ravage the earth. They brought shiny-haired rats, with long straight tails
pointing back to disaster. Dust swept across the globe, sending those who were left huddling to the wood. Trees still felt tender, sure. Boys made friends with deer, & wrote home to Ma about strange new routines, of milking the well and praying for outer space.