Blues arose from the sanctimony 
of Sundays, the sins of Saturday nights, 
the tavern, the tabernacle, the barroom 
and brothel, soul immortal, body 
tempestuous, bone and flesh, hair and nail, 
plush cash, flush of passion, rattle of dice, 
fling of feet, ring of laughter, sigh 
of satisfaction, preacher’s roar, gospel 
chorus’s soar, children’s shouts, Jim Crow 
louts, Whites Only, harmonica’s lonely 
midnight moon-spite freight train wail. 

—First published in Beckemeyer’s most recent book, The Currency of His Light (Turning Plow Press, 24 March 2023; available at Watermark Books & Café); poem appears here with his permission.

*Publisher’s Note:

Epigraph is from Hamby’s book Babel (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004). The poem “Vex Me” is reprinted in The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor (7 March 2008):
https://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php%3Fdate=2008%252F03%252F07.html

To learn more about the poet, see Profiles in Poetry: Barbara Hamby, an interview by Al Rocheleau in Of Poets and Poetry, Florida State Poets Association Newsletter (March/April 2022).

Links above were retrieved on 20 August 2023.

Roy J. Beckemeyer’s

latest poetry collections include The Currency of His Light (Turning Plow Press, 2023) and Mouth Brimming Over (Blue Cedar Press, 2019). Stage Whispers (Meadowlark Books, 2018) won the 2019 Nelson Poetry Book Award. Amanuensis Angel (Spartan Press, 2018) comprises ekphrastic poems inspired by modern artists’ depictions of angels. His first book, Music I Once Could Dance To (Coal City Press, 2014), was a 2015 Kansas Notable Book. With Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, he co-edited Kansas Time+Place: An Anthology of Heartland Poetry (Little Balkans Press, 2017). His poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize (2015 and 2020) and for Best of the Net (2018), and was selected for The Best Small Fictions 2019.

Beckemeyer serves on the editorial boards of Konza Journal and River City Poetry. A retired engineer and scientific journal editor, he is also a nature photographer who, in his spare time, researches the mechanics of insect flight and the Paleozoic insect fauna of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Alabama. He lives in Wichita, Kansas, where he and his wife recently celebrated their 60th anniversary.

Please visit author’s website for more information about his books, as well as links to interviews and readings (scroll down his About page for the link-list).

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Megarhyssa, ekphrastic poem by Beckemeyer in MacQueen’s Quinterly (Issue 14, August 2022), nominated by MacQ for the Pushcart Prize

⚡ The Color of Blessings in MacQueen’s Quinterly (Issue 5, October 2020), nominated by MacQ for the Pushcart

⚡ Featured Artist in KYSO Flash (Issue 12, Summer 2019); showcasing Beckemeyer’s poetry, prose poetry, and insect photography

⚡ Words for Snow, a prose poem in KYSO Flash (Issue 9, Spring 2018), which was selected for reprinting in The Best Small Fictions 2019