"Blood Writing: Poems" by Sean Sexton

by Sparrow    March 07, 2012

Sean has made of his life a book. It is a Cowboy Bible -- but not archaic. (Sean is a cowboy in Vero Beach, Florida.) He has mastered the pleasure of being ancient but not archaic. One is shocked to learn that his title refers to blood spattered on fences when cattle are slaughtered. (A helpful photograph illustrates the "blood writing," which closely resembles a Jackson Pollock drip-painting.) Sean examines the messages of blood:

In the place of horns

is that crazy writing

that says nothing,

everywhere in red.

I always knew Sean as an inspired visual artist who wrote lyrical letters. But he has located his own poetry, deep within his observational prose:

The last Sunday of the year

in the church hour,

while the children are away, cattle fed,

and chickens turned out in the yard,

we fill the woodbox of the stove,

Sean is genuinely humble, and real humility is akin to pride. He catalogs the tools of his life, one of which is his melting heart.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

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