Miss Oregon 1946 By Kelly Braden

				
		Miss Oregon 1946
				
		Miss Oregon 1946 buys groceries at Ralphs,
				flirts with me, presses hard
		into cantaloupes
		shakes watermelons
		sniffs bananas, says
				they pick these darn things too green, 
				before the sugars sweeten
				call me snobbish, but I won't buy green bananas!
				
				She married a white corn farmer 
					sixty years ago, she loved
					how he would rise at 4AM
					join brown skinned hands
		& touch corn stalks like anointing the feet of Jesus.  Together
		they ship food to starved children 
					we feel sorry for on television.  They never 
					watch television.

					He has Alzheimer's.  
				She has a smile 

				begging admiration.  I imagine
		how she cart-wheeled into frat boy hearts
				as an Oregon State Cheerleader
				atop the pyramid, 
		decades of folded skin smooth again, the Miss Congeniality smile
				that impressed her judges 
				that captivated her husband.  I imagine
		long auburn hair
		curled precisely 
				for all those foolish boys to gawk at.

				She continues 
				to grow white corn, & tend
				to her husband.  She is a stranger 
				some days. 
					Though he always smiles at pretty ladies
					he can not remember 
					how much he loves her, 
				so she remembers 
					for him.

Poetry Writing

SAN DIEGO, Cali. (AP) - William Carlos Williams said it best: no ideas but in things. Images are essential to poetry. Ideas are great for philosophy, but poetry needs things to move language.
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Fiction Writing

LA MESA, Cali. (AP) - Space time place is essential to writing the Great American Novel. Moby Dick, On the Road, even American Psycho delve deep into the American conscience.
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Hypermnesia
Is Visionary

PORTLAND, Or. (AP) - Hypermnesia stirs images of former lovers, childhood hauntings, and encounters with true poetic vagabonds.
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Who Is Kelly Braden?

TACOMA, Wash. (AP) - West coast poet Kelly Braden attempts to dissect the world around him, and color it with something more beautiful than ordinary observation.
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