Roger Kirschbaum is an English Instructor at Northwest Missouri State University. He has also been a student and an instructor at both the University of Missouri-Kansas City and Missouri Western State University. His first book, Hunter Ranch, was published in June 2000 by the Woodley Press, Washburn University. He has won a Kansas Arts Commission Mini-Fellowship for Poetry. He has had work published in College English, Midwest Quarterly, The Rockhurst Review, Hawai’i Pacific Review, Red Rock Review, Briar Cliff Review, Bear Deluxe, and others. He has a 17-year-old son, Jhett.

Advice:

I’ve always thought that a lot of writers get off to a good start, writing a lot, getting a lot of feedback and receiving accolades. Then what happens is they go through some rough times, receiving negative feedback or not getting published, and they might begin to think that writing is not for them, not in their blood. The hallmark of any great writer is that they write for themselves, not for publication or money or fame. Face it; most writers rarely get those things, especially money and fame. If you want to write, write. If you want recognition, find a cure for cancer or AIDs, or better yet, become a professional baseball player. You’ll be better known, but you won’t have done anything greater. Remember, the purpose of the writer is to keep humanity from destroying itself. Not to set yourself apart from the people you’re trying to save.

--A home is where you have the chance

of dying where you chose to live.

                        John Clellon Holmes

I don’t know the sorrow of the wind

or the tired drift of snow from Julie’s

eyes to the ground. I can’t place

my finger on the plaintive creak of trees

or the dead light of the moon tracing

my figure on a thin page of hay. Why

the stars are dim and so cold in their distance

and why the smoke curls itself into nothing

I don’t know. But somewhere

in the viscous eyes of horses, in the wrinkled

skin of grain gracing the rain barrel,

in the mortal call of coyotes, in the crisp

abandoned shells of bees, is a clouded

truth hard to believe because it can’t

be proved: that this life is nothing

without mystery, that its love suffers long

and is kind, that it bears all things, believes

all things, hopes all things and endures

all things. That when the earth rolls over

in its bed and another day rises to find me

older, what I hold in my hand might fail,

but the quiet engines of the morning

will crank open yet another sky, and the dormice

in their tiny worlds will huddle together

in the barley, carrying on the insistent scufflings

of life. And when I go out finally, in the last

light of day, away from the surety of Julie’s firm

embrace to gather the foals into the fold,

to barter with the field for certainty

still no answers will come; the night

will refuse to open itself for any of my small

perusals. And as I find my way back

home, along the loosely braided gravel

to the warm confines of our bed, I will run

my thoughts over the only thing I know

to be true - that I don’t know anything

to be true, save for Julie’s sure

persistent breathing, the heat

of her hand on mine.