Ruins of the 20th Century (free here, and for sale)
As this chapbook is now in the hands of early readers and buyers I am publishing the MS here. It is a little hard to follow because it is formatted for print. If you would like your own paperback copy you can order it from me at anthonyleewatkins@gmail.com. The cost is $6 or 3 for $15, plus shipping handling which is $2.00 to most USA addresses for one or just under $4.00 for the packet of 3. You will need to send me your mailing address and I will send you a price including postage. I will accept payment thru paypal, zelle, and cashap.
Copies signed and/or personalized at no extra cost. anything beyond a signature will be typed on a small slip of paper as my hand writing is undecipherable.
Note I will ship to non USA addresses, but of course the postage will be higher, for example, much of Canada adds a dollar and parts of Europe adds $2. I do not yet have pricing for other places.
Of course, you are welcome to simply read them for free here.
Anthony writes and lives in North Florida,
with his wife and 100 lb. pit bull lapdog, among the live oaks,
the pine straw plantations,
and a world of decaying structures
that share their age and condition with the poet.
He also is a volunteer community teaching assistant at the University of Pennsylvania as part of Professor Al Filreis’ massive free online poetry course known as ModPo.
He has founded and published a series of literary journals, online and hardcopy since 1995.
Currently he is working to bring students of poetry in local colleges together with those who live inside prisons, through his new project: Poetry, Prisons, & Newsprint.
You can find many of his poems on his blog at https://anthonyuplandpoetwatkins.wordpress.com/
If you would like to reach Anthony to purchase copies of his poetry,
or to book him for a speaking engagement,
either a reading or a discussion about poetry, you can contact him via this email:
Ruins of the 20th Century
[image error]Anthony Watkins
2023
Falling Down Press
Jasper * Starke * O’Brien
i
For those who can remember, and those who cannot
ii
The White Birds
in front of the old cinderblock
United Methodist Church
with the sunbaked graveyard
beside it,
all behind
a field of cattle munching
on overgrown weeds.
This is July
near the break down pond
not hot yet
and the old three sisters
stand waiting for
tobacco that
will never come
15
Three Rings in Concrete
in a low concrete block building
smelling of mold
listening to rain
playing solitaire with coated playing cards
so worn the coating is coming off
I have already read
all the books in the library
including two books
on sewing and cross stitch
I dream of bigger cities
and bigger libraries
not knowing
how happy I
already am
writing out poems
in four line rhyming verses
on notebook paper
in a three ring binder
and drawing pictures
of horses and automobiles
to be twelve again
on rainy summer afternoons.
14
Previous Works
Cabbage Field and Rust 1995
Heroes and Bandits 1996
Machines of the Mind 1996
Out of the Soft Delta Dirt 1999
High maintenance Ways 2001
I Might Die in Florida 2002
After the Door Had Opened 2003
How to See Alabama 2003
If Mississippi Could Talk 2004
From the Tree Caves 2008
Depression Enterprise 2009
Single Buds 2010
Rusty Tractors (Collected Poems 1994-2004) 2011
Warm Enough for Ice Cream (Collected Poems 2005-2011) 2011
May’s Hill 2013
Blind Carafe of Wheelbarrow Rain 2014
30 More 2015
Silent Poems 2016
Black Snakes and Happy, the Little Christmas Book 2016
Sometimes California or March Set 2017
Broken Samovar 2017
Hard Okra and the Seed Pod Trees 2017 (Collected Poems 2011-2017)
Old Copper 2017
The Lost Season 2018
Written in Darkness 2020
Lovers Beyond the Reeds 2021
Translations of Fire 2022
The House of Two Fountains 2022
iii
Contents
Ruins of the 20th Century 1
Thirteen 2
Even with Rust 3
Dirty wife beater 4
Middle aged back 5
Three Women, a Vulture, a Kitty Cat, and a Ball of Yarn 6
In a World of Chicken Hotdogs 8
This Book Was Written 9
Bad Shoulders 10
Little Things and Big Things 11
I Have Climbed Mountains 12
I Used to Build Bicycles 13
Three Rings in Concrete 14
The White Birds 15
iv
I Used to Build Bicycles
gears and chains
and forks, pedals
and little clip devices
thin rubber tires
thirty-six spokes
front and back
more on the tandems,
but who really buys
those, anyway?
I had a shop
on a side street
in Earle, Arkansas,
between the bait shop
lean-to and a oily
garage where my uncle
rebuilt John Deeres
making that “pop-pop” sound.
Most of my days
in solitude, closing up
on perfect days
to ride by endless
cotton fields of my mind.
13
I Have Climbed Mountains
lept from rocks
swam in lakes
full of I don’t know what
even snow skied in Alabama
fished for crappie
at midnight
ate a tarpon
I caught in the keys
I dropped out
drove a truck
now teach poetry
at university
I sit quietly
in my cottage
in Mayo
knowing so much
is past.
12
Ruins of the 20th Century
every day, before I go
riding down the roads
looking for pictures
to take of ruins:
old barns, gas stations,
mansions in disrepair,
I look in the mirror
and see my own
ruins of the 20th Century
1
Thirteen
I was going to change the world
Writing a dozen influential novels
and half as many
books of poetry,
all to be studied and
remembered for at least 400 years.
Sixty-three
pre-dawn coffee
walking the dog
listening to both
rain on the front porch tin roof
and the courthouse bell
across the street
tolling four am
eating a sandwich made from
leftover cream chicken
my wife cooked for supper last night
planning pork tacos for breakfast
a family trip to Tallahassee
for broken watches
and college clothes
then back to supper
of home-made deep-fried eggrolls
tomorrow a trip to the springs
before the rain comes
I never changed the world,
but I have loved the life,
so far.
2
Little Things and Big Things
up at two am, coffee
and internet browsing,
walking the dog
in the cold darkness,
can’t focus on
the poetry study group
even though Joan Retallack
is one of my favorites
Refilling my coffee
I note, for the thousandth time
a spot of missing paint
a bit of dog-chewed
newsprint in the floor
“I should pick that up
I should get out the paint
and touch that spot up”
and then I remember
the siding shingles
one missing two years ago
so I bought a box of new ones
another has since fallen
the box unopened,
the shingles still missing
I drink my coffee
and think of little things.
11
Bad Shoulders
Like old kings sending
thugs in the night to wake
and torture me, reminding me
that, unlike Samson,
there is not one more strength
even to pull down the temple
and the feet
numb and tingly
with an occasional stab
like a twisted ankle
though I can see
nothing has turned
only a fresh chasing pain
run through and gone
sleep like a blind man
tethered to the grist
pushes and goes nowhere.
10
Even with Rust
on the near empty beach
in my folding chair
looking at pages of the book
I am not reading
The brown and white corgi
lays at my feet
looking at me with eyes
that never saw the queen.
“Shes dead, you know”, I say
but the corgi doesn’t know,
doesn’t care, neither do I.
I see the old Ford F100
in the shade
not mine, though like me
still running
but not what it was
Dry rot has attacked
the white walls
but they still hold air
all in all
it looks better than me
even with rust.
3
Dirty wife beater
he stopped on the side
of the road
in his dirty wife-beater shirt,
shooting his pistol,
at first at a snake,
and then at old beer cans he found.
I’m not sure he was crazy
or just crazy drunk
the door of the dusty white van
hung open had a crazy angle
and the pistol made flashes
in the shade of the pine trees.
I didn’t stop to ask any questions
because he was stopped
on the side of the road
in his dirty wife beater shirt
shooting at snakes
and old beer cans he found there.
and I had somewhere
to be further
down the road.
4
This Book Was Written
on Horse lined paper
bought for ten cents
from the nice lady
who kept her store
in the tiny closet
across the hall
from Mrs. Bumper’s
principal’s office
where I never got a paddling
though, the fact
that Mrs. Bumpers knew
my parents was worse.
I didn’t buy the paper
from the store,
the lady always wore
a gray apron full of pockets
and pushed a cart
filled with paper,
yellow wooden pencils
erasers, big and little
glue and paste.
On these pages
of three ring paper
I have written my life.
9
In a World of Chicken Hotdogs
(in memory of Bernadette Mayer)
The taste of burnt vinyl
swirls around my mouth
tiny black flakes
on my lips an gums
There is no money
in the sink
coffee is
the only luxury
Black beans and rice
for breakfast
with enough salt
Christmas comes,
as always, broke
and demanding.
Thank you
Baby Jesus
for my coffee.
8
Middle aged back
At 63 I am well past
the middle of my age,
but out of politeness
we call old people in their 60s
middle aged instead of old
I think of this
In the gray cold drizzle fills the air,
but doesn’t quite fill my boat.
I had a notion to go out on the water.
It was cold, but it wasn’t raining
And the way the gray slate sky
ran into the gray slate water
with almost no horizon
appealed to me earlier
but now the gray above
and the gray below
has become the gray within
and I know I must hurry home
to some coffee and maybe
warm winter soup.
the cold, wet air makes
all of my bones ache
but I put my middle-age back
into the oars and pull
and pull and it hurts
a lot
for there is no Tylenol
on a rowboat
just an old man pretending
to be middle-aged
trying to get home
5
Three Women, a Vulture, a Kitty Cat, and a Ball of Yarn
The older red-headed lady
in the quilted red house coat
hung out laundry
on the open porch
the baby played with the kitty cat
and a yellow ball of yarn.
The vultures swooped down
out of the perfect blue sky
and carried the child and the kitty cat away.
When she saw the ball of yarn
and no child and no kitten,
it took her a while to sort it out.
She called the cops
and they found the baby
in the side yard where
the vulture had dropped it,
though the kitty cat was eaten,
and because this is not
a Greek myth, it had not eaten
the child’s eyes or intestines or spleen,
though the child
had a nasty gash under her left eye
which became infected and left an awful scar
which remained, even after she
grew to be a tall redheaded women on her own
6
and she was never
fond of vultures,
or kitty cats or yarn,
though she always
loved her grandmother
and the red quilted housecoat
with the golden thread
in the pattern of a sun
but the sun of a different earth.
But that afternoon,
long before the baby
grew up with a scar,
the young mother
stood in the sunny room
with her short pageboy
brown hair and
her short-sleeved
black turtleneck
and charcoal brown pencil skirt
and wondered if she could
ever leave her baby
with her mother again.
7
