Ketel One, rocks glass, three cubes of ice… Life can be as simple as we make it.

Bone (né Chris Leonard) has lived in Albany for 13 years. He is an avid hiker and wilderness guide, sculptor (reforming what has been broken) and writer (current articles and books focus on America’s violent traditions, wild edible plants, and dehydrating food for camping). His work has been published in New Author's Journal, Smorgasbord, and Homicide Studies.

POEMS

• Grimm Tales
• As The Sky Opens Over Guanajuato, Mexico

GRIMM TALES

The Pied Piper was real
A psychopath and pederast
June 20, 1484
He spirited away, 130 children
From the Village of Hammel,
And used them in horrible ways.
Contemporary accounts
Tell of dismembered little bodies
Scattered in the underbrush
Or festooning the branches of trees.

Dance around the Maypole
Ring around the rosy
As a lone girl, not more than seven
Masks the stench of death with posises
As her family,
Victims of bubonic plague
Are reduced to ashes

Often, the witches of mythology
Were nothing more than women
Owners of property,
Whose children couldn’t wait for their inheritance
Easier to burn people than time.

There is a history to your “Fairy tales”,
I just thought you should know.

AS THE SKY OPENS OVER GUANAJUATO, MEXICO

As the sky opens over Guanajuato, Mexico
Another night on the terrace de el taberna de los anos,
on the upper slope of the city.
Paco cracks the seal on our second bottle of Presidente,
and Donicito is the first to call a toast.

Between my mangled Spanish, and their broken English,
somehow, we understand each other.
We listen to the callenjoneados begin their Saturday night choral
far below in the Zocalo, broken only by the braying of a donkey,
closer, like the springs on a well-worn bed.

I lean back in my chair, and sip at my brandy,
staring that the stars, as they shine down at me in this bowl city.
I know I will have to leave soon,
and give up this woodcarver’s life,
and these friends who are happy enough to understand me only half the time.

But this is not my world of words and text,
where accuracy and comprehension, grammar and focus define

who I am.

Where understanding is expected, but just as likely to be missed.
Unlike me…

Until then, I’ll drink more Presidente,
And wait for my lady friend, while el Pipila stands overhead,
and with these friends, I’ll continue to speak
words we don’t understand,
and we won’t care.