Grandpa told stories of Custer, Kit Carson, and the notorious outlaw, Tom Horn, who was hung in Cheyenne in 1903. Grandpa twisted his neck unnaturally, bulged his eyes, and dangled his tongue off the side of his mouth. “It took him 17 minutes to die.”
Poem by Charlie Brice
Art by Shad Clark
Boiled Dinners
They could take half-a-day to prepare.
Mother would cut up turnips, carrots,
onions, grab a slab of salt port and most
of a roast beef, toss it into the big green
pot, fill it with water, turn on the burner,
then go do something else.
The house smelled like a place where
I belonged. Grandpa would arrive
from Omaha, after riding the rails on his
White Pass (he was a fifty-year man
on the Union Pacific). He’d open a paper bag
that contained tomatoes, green beans,
and hot peppers from his garden.
Mom put plastic dinner plates on top of the boiling
pot to warm them and then dealt them
onto our table. My job was to frame them
with silverware and napkins. You could
cut the beef with a fork and the vegetables
would melt in your mouth. Salt and
pepper were used to excess until those of us with
daring palates slathered a chunk of beef with horseradish.
The war on our tongues resembled the battle
between the Archangel Gabriel and Satan for Paradise.
Between mouthfuls, the stories began:
Mother told of Mr. McGrath who lived next door
when she was a child, and who, liquored-up,
shot his rifle into the air every New Year’s Eve.
When mom was ten, he managed to shoot himself
in the foot. Mr. O’Neil, another neighbor,
brother to Monsignor O’Neil at their church,
would go on a tear at the local watering
hole, whereupon Mrs. O’Neil locked him out
of their house. “Locked out of me own
home,” my mother used a brogue to imitate him.
Grandpa told stories of Custer, Kit Carson, and
the notorious outlaw, Tom Horn, who was
hung in Cheyenne in 1903. Grandpa twisted his neck
unnaturally, bulged his eyes, and dangled
his tongue off the side of his mouth. “It took him
17 minutes to die,” he said. Mother cringed while
my dad laughed, swigged his Budweiser, and flicked ash
off his Kent cigarette with its Micronite filter.
I’d eat my meat, horseradish, and turnips.
I’d listen.
This was peace.
This was a place
where I belonged.
About the Author
Charlie Brice won the 2020 Field Guide Poetry Magazine Poetry Contest and placed third in the 2021 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Prize. His sixth full-length poetry collection is Pinnacles of Hope (Impspired Books, 2022). His poetry has been nominated three times for both the Best of Net Anthology and the Pushcart Prize and has appeared in Atlanta Review, The Honest Ulsterman, Ibbetson Street, The Paterson Literary Review, Impspired Magazine, Salamander Ink Magazine, and elsewhere.
About the Artist
Shad Clark is a writer, filmmaker, and multidisciplinary visual artist. His work explores the liminal spaces between being and otherness through stories and imagery delving into nature, body horror, science, and technology.
Clark’s original short films have played festivals around the world and, along with original screenplays, they have won awards and other recognition. Clark has worked as a collaborator and creative mercenary on other films, as well as in marketing the occasional comic, and a handful of games.
Lately, Clark’s been exploring and visualizing some more ambitious ideas through digital compositing and collage, using original manipulated photography and assets he’s art directing to AI. When not working in socially explosive art and fiction, Clark researches and writes about animals and environmental issues.
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