A Rattle of Individual Voices and Tires

By Kim Shuck

Incantations over formica at
Carefully chosen hours we define the old
Route 66 the
World serpent shattered now like the spine of the
Carpathians, the vertebrae of the Andes we are
Black top and burned coffee, we are pie 24 hours a day we
Chart sunrises and arrange stones we run
Fingertips over petroglyphs, over countertop scratches, our prayer
Songs call cactus flowers out of the lizard jeweled night the breath of the
Lungless, that other beat of a heart that doesn’t keep the
Blood warm and the faint outline of an old-time eye that
Stares from an unclenched fist.


Copyright © Kim Shuck. All rights reserved.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Kim Shuck is a writer, editor and visual artist of Tsalagi and Polish ancestry. She holds an MFA in Fine Arts from San Francisco State University. Her first solo book of poetry Smuggling Cherokee won the 2005 Diane Decorah award from the Native Writer’s Circle of the Americas and was published by Greenfield Review Press in 2006. Her first book of prose, Rabbit Stories, came out in February of 2013. 

Her second solo book of poetry, Clouds Running In, forthcoming in  2014, includes drawings by the brilliant Cumbrian artist, Marcer Campbell. 

Visit Kim at www.kimshuck.com

River, Blood, And Corn: A Community of Voices

Promoting community and strengthening cultures with storytelling, poetry and prose.

  • Copyright © 2010-2024. Individual writers and photographers retain all rights to their work, unless they have other agreements with previous publishers.
  • We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

  • If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive.—Barry Lopez, in Crow and Weasel