“Country Mark” by Norman Minnick

Country Mark

On the porch of the Country Mark
pipe smoke, talk of rain.
Bob is scratching lottery
tickets again.

(originally published in Folly)

Norman “Buzz” Minnick came of age in the 1980’s punk scene of Louisville, Kentucky, and was the frontman for the influential hardcore band, Bush League. His collections of poetry are To Taste the Water (winner of the First Series Award from Mid-List Press), Folly (Wind Publications), and a chapbook of poems entitled Advice for a Young Poet (David Robert Books). Minnick is the editor of Between Water and Song: New Poets for the Twenty-First Century (White Pine Press) as well as Jim Watt’s landmark study of William Blake, Work Toward Knowing: Beginning with Blake (Kinchafoonee Creek Press), The Indianapolis Anthology (Belt Publications), and The Lost Etheridge: Uncollected Poems of Etheridge Knight (Kinchafoonee Creek Press). Minnick lives in Indianapolis.