Conjunctions:35 American Poetry: States of the Art

Two Poems
The following appears with an additional Tate poem in Conjunctions:35.
 
Witches
 
             There are all kinds of druids and
witches living in the hills around here.
They don’t hurt anybody as far as we know.
But you can always spot them at the grocery
store. First off, they drive these really
broken down old pick-up trucks, often with
hand-made wooden shelters over beds
like they could live in there. And they’re
covered in layers of shawls and scarves
and bedecked with long gaudy earrings
and necklaces and bracelets. And always
the long, long hair. They buy huge amounts
of supplies, twenty pounds of cheese, giant
bags of granola, etc. They move quickly
as if afraid of being burned at a stake.
We all know who they are and like having
them amongst us on their secret missions
to decorate their inner Christmas trees
with bedevilled human chickenbones. 

James Tate is the author of Memoir of the Hawk (Ecco) and Dreams of a Robot Dancing Bee (Verse).