DOWN THE RIVER
ALM No.94, October 2026
POETRY
Erosion Too as Creation
Like a published tome, seemingly permanent
as a polished gem—the child’s magical trust
in authority. The instinctual reach
for the parent’s hand almost a perfect act,
connected to the elemental—
parents, the church, the river trails,
the smell of dead carp—alive and
moving to set right a day.
Like the first grader’s careless run to the wild.
Like the half heard but real rhythm
of an organic anthem. Maybe brief/
but fearless, this breathing in, of tentative words.
Intuitive this open-eyed faith/feeling the glory
in red/orange/gold—life open to the wind.
Forgotten, the rats gnawing holes in the foundation.
Forgotten, the roadkill possum flattening further.
Forgotten/a trash bag heaved into the creek
on a wild roadside that devours the new.
Like a child’s future, the implications of much more
about to be revealed. The river coming
from afar to top the levee/
painting mud over all/the soft muck stretching
to the edge of the void. You could still be
a kid open to what lies ahead/
the blink as the world comes on thunderstorm fierce,
willing to destroy to produce new autonomy.
That strange smile that accepts rattlesnakes,
ticks, speeding cars and roadkill,
the slow death of grandparents.
That momentary ironic peace when the one-
to-be-trusted looks on from afar,
wags a head, whispers
confidence in authority is never stable,
understanding only now that evolution
already alters what once seemed permanent—
this love darting on with new habits/
collecting whole lives as memory shifts,
bringing close the old and the new—
so much altered, like one explanation
could circle the insistent milieu,
pushing forward what will be.
Down the river
You want all to be mixed together,
the humor and the hurt, past and present loves,
but it is always too early to take it in,
this business of being guilty until proven innocent,
living for the future morning
with alternate realities (again),
when so many in the humid drift have been
sold down the river
still sliding past baked brown banks’
palpable with dead fish rot.
Round here soft mud threatens to sink forever
into the stark and pungent yearly floods.
Where out in the current skinned logs are in perpetual
motion/sometimes whole trees moving
as a way of life. Maybe imagined, the occasional
bloated dead cow promising that everything
will arrive in the flow. Those of us living the flow
know well the Mississippi revels in corruption,
the smell of growing Missouri Bootheel swamps
encroaching on dusty soybean/cotton fields.
For in the lowland gravity pulls down all into the dusty ground,
the sparse Missouri/Arkansas floodplain busy
defining for good what it means to be flat.
No hiding in the noon light when the sell-me-down-
the-river despair is aware those in charge
don’t care about your fate. No surprise that
the sharecropper shacks have crept this far north,
lives from the beginning exposed to the elements,
locked in the poverty of those made weak
with work.
Forget the bucket list of cruel Louisiana further on,
where the river widens in haunted histories
muddied, all those sold down the river—
those stories stark in the barge ledger books.
The muddy flow is the universe of degraded commodities
drawn down fast into a mammoth corrupt vein.
Living here long means knowing the strangeness
of what lives in the flow. We’ve caught carp
that moved fast like an unstoppable freight train,
a rough force never to be tamed.
Labeled by Iowans as an alien species
that must be left to die on the bank. You got to
keep eyes wide in this rich humid context,
believing you’ll be stronger if you’ve
experienced the thick mosquito haze
of Cairo largely deserted, the bullets from
the 1960s race riots still embedded in the courthouse,
the whole town a series of voids,
as if in slow motion deliberately erased.
Though further on the Ohio still comes on,
like it always has, joining the Mississippi
as a chocolate roil eager to forget origins.
For in the underworld the currents move fast,
the ravaged remnants of lives streaming
downstream No choice but to read like a poem
to acknowledge the longhand scrawl
of the bill of sale, here then gone,
though eyes want to disconnect, then look
sideways, desperate to feel
rather than see the next bend. You can’t just
live that negative way, though lonely
words anticipate the great Gulf,
and shrimp and sea gulls and bull sharks,
the messiness of a Dead Zone.
You can’t finesse away, the endless
Midwestern detritus overwhelming
our puny human efforts/all this proof of
all that will surely be.
Hiding from God
Touching the day’s layers gaining light,
we rolled together, then straggled upright,
seeking a framed view with a plan, as if
it was possible to control our own day.
Sampled breakfast, and filled the bird feeder
for the chickadees, called the dog from
fresh sleep, so now he could be magnetized to us,
his melancholy forgotten, along with
his obsessive scratching at the itch.
Our plan—a Des Moines River exploration,
the metal john boat gliding atop the river—
a summer dream of hooking big carp with corn,
time stopped, the sun baking—wonder alive/
a forever dream feeling unseen the living
moving fast in the liquid, unstoppable like
the freight train careening on its track beside the river.
But we are not yet even out of our pajamas,
the heat promising to be oppressive,
when we sense a flicker at the front door—
and that quick we know black and white clad
Jehovah Witnesses incapable of humor,
have caught us again. The firm, almost religious
knock here for us, and we duck low.
A giggle, prone on the floor, trying to be silent,
both cats coming close to arch their backs
against our faces, purring comically,
taking our intimacy as the time to play.
We feel the god people, so damn persistent,
peering through windows, as if we are
bad children playing hide and seek.
The knock again, and we squirm to a corner,
pretending to be dead on the dusty floor
as they move to another window, sure with
God’s magic eye they will spot us lying on
the back porch, and take in instantly our
pathetic attempts to hide. In an instant we are
up, running to the far depths, determined
to never be caught, knowing our moves
are just and right—that we can never let them win.
Paper trail
The familiar disappears when we turn our heads.
Abruptly erased, paperboys, so no dogs rush
in the game to protect their turf,
no metal coin changers hang from
the thirteen-year-old’s belt, the kid used to
the sound of hard-earned money coming
home to the bank. No more houses, streets,
yards imprinted as the complex interior trail.
No time stalled in old lady cookie chats,
the gardener on his knees saying with a gesture
I am necessary and welcome, in this afternoon
lull, like once upon a time the long days
could last indefinitely. Gone, drenching
summer rains, soapy worms stretching long
on the pavement. The urgency in winter’s
stray snowflake signaling a storm coming on,
despite the work yet to do. No great
announcement when the familiar disappears.
Just absence, no more folding, bagging, throwing—
at home on the spider bike, feet hands eyes
in synchrony reaching over handlebars to grab
and throw—no satisfying clang nailing
the metal screen door. No permission given
to trespass on sidewalks and driveways,
to be outside in dark and light, wet and dry,
in every shift in weather. No eternal comradery
with other paperboys—Thomas Edison,
Warren Buffet, fucking Matt Lauer.
No bike cruise downtown to witness folded
papers sliding off the press, the rich smell
of fresh ink smeared on hands, and on the canvas
paperboy’s bag. When the world shifts,
the past erased, no adult nods of appreciation,
no tips for a job well done. Overnight
oiled adults with beat up cars replacing
kids cruising without effort on bikes.
If we had eyes to see, we would have noted
the sacred power of print disappearing.
No more hands folding feverishly,
no more getting ready to fly. Gone, the illusion
of permanence—all memory in doubt,
though close enough the young, queued,
waiting to bring home the news, eager
to believe that what once was will always be.
Mark Vogel lives at the back of a Blue Ridge holler with his wife, Susan Weinberg, an accomplished fiction, and creative non-fiction, writer. He currently is an Emeritus Professor of English at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. Poems and short stories have appeared in several dozen literary journals. A poetry collection, Further West, (Serving House Press) will appear in Fall, 2026.
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