FIVE LIVES FROM SPOON RIVER

FRANCIS TURNER

I could not run or play

In boyhood.

In manhood I could only sip the cup,

Not drink —

For scarlet-fever left my heart diseased.

Yet I lie here

Soothed by a secret none but Mary knows:

There is a garden of acacia,

Catalpa trees, and arbors sweet with vines —

There on that afternoon in June

By Mary’s side —

Kissing her with my soul upon my lips

It suddenly took flight.

KNOLT HOHEIMER

I was the first fruits of the battle of Missionary Ridge.

When I felt the bullet enter my heart

I wished I had staid at home and gone to jail

For stealing the hogs of Curl Ternary,

Instead of running away and joining the army.

Rather a thousand times the county jail

Than to lie under this marble figure with wings,

And this granite pedestal

Bearing the words, “Pro Patria.”

What do they mean, anyway?

MINERVA JONES

I am Minerva, the village poetess

Hooted at, jeered at by the Yahoos of the street

For my heavy body, cock-eye, and rolling walk.

And all the more when “Butch” Weldy

Captured me after a brutal hung.

He left me to my fate with Doctor Meyers;

And I sank into death, growing numb from the feet up.

Like one stepping deeper and deeper into a stream of ice.

Will some one go to the village newspaper,

And gather into a book the verses I wrote?—

I thirsted so for love!

I hungered so for life!