THE WRECK • by J. B. Hogan

There are buffalo across the highway,
up the hill by a barbed wire fence,
winter scraggly buffalo chasing a black pickup –
a boy in back tossing bales of hay
onto last night’s snow,
a triangular white patch, bright against
the washed out brown of a dead hay field.

And nearer, to the right, a jogging horse,
dark beside the barbed wire
of his separate, fenced off track;
disappearing then, behind weather-faded
wood shelters of ostriches — ostriches
tall, gangly birds
surely confused by the cold and snow,
standing on tiptoe in a closed, wire compound.

Across, then, further left on the hill,
dug out mounds of dirt and ice,
and in one, the wreck of a caterpillar,
a small, orange caterpillar
half down in, half up out of, the hole –
metal treads stopped and rusting
jagged in the lead gray light.

J. B. Hogan is a writer and poet living in Fayetteville, Arkansas. He has a Ph.D. in English (Literature) from Arizona State University (1979) and worked for many years as a technical writer. His credits include the four-story fiction chapbook Near Love Stories online at www.cervenabarvapress.com (forthcoming) and over forty-five other stories in: Istanbul Literary Review, Admit 2, Every Day Fiction, Ranfurly Review, Dead Mule, Smokebox, The Scruffy Dog Review, Aphelion, The Square Table, Rumble, Bewildering Stories, Avatar Review, Copperfield Review, Ascent Aspirations, Megaera, The Pedestal Magazine, Dogwood Journal, Raving Dove, Mobius, and Viet Nam Generation.

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THE WRECK • by J. B. Hogan, 3.6 out of 5 based on 15 ratings
Posted on March 18, 2009 in Poems
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6 Responses to “THE WRECK • by J. B. Hogan”


  1. William Soule Says:
    March 18th, 2009 at 12:38 am

    Excellent. Such a vivid scene.

  2. Stephanie Spencer Says:
    March 18th, 2009 at 8:38 am

    Loved it! The ostriches cracked me up. My only question is, what, no llamas?

  3. Kathleen Cassen Mickelson Says:
    March 18th, 2009 at 10:48 am

    I’ve read and reread this a few times and am drawn to the various contrasts: light and dark, alive and dead, machine and animal. There’s more there, of course, but I need to read this yet again. Nicely done.

  4. Sharon Says:
    March 18th, 2009 at 11:43 am

    Vividly descriptive, but beyond that didn’t really communicate much to me yet. I’ll ponder it for a while.

  5. Amy Corbin Says:
    March 18th, 2009 at 1:27 pm

    Me too. I keep coming back to it.

  6. Mark Estes Says:
    March 18th, 2009 at 1:45 pm

    You did it again, JB. Wonderfully descriptive piece. Love the contrasts. All the changes in time, methods and technology are captured in ‘snapshots’.

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