Connemara Moonshine

Dynamic, vibrant poetry from one of Montana's most prolific poets, Connemara Moonshine is Mark Gibbons first full-length book with Camphorweed Press. Born and raised in Montana, of Irish heritage, Gibbons has taught high school and worked most of the physical labor jobs available to blue collar descendants determined to stay in Montana at all costs. His poetry is working class, rural, focused on family, yet at the same time speaks to universal themes and invites readers from all walks of life to join in for a listen.

"Mark Gibbons is titanically gifted. He knows the hidden secret of love is mortality. Though his work is black ass dark and often violent, it is essentially spiritual if not religious, coming from the heart of a church with no walls. Buy this book. You can't afford not to. You will find yourself in it. Connemara Moonshine is illuminated by love and light, as rich and intoxicating as the title."
-Ed Lahey, author of The Blind Horses and Still More Poems

"Sturdy as fresh-built head frames, or trestles, or 5-wire-fences, these poems--each adorned with a gritty thumbprint as its coat of arms--are the work, the labors of love and loss, of one of The Last Best Place's finest poets. Reading Connemara Moonshine time-machines me back twenty-five years to Hugo's big round oak kitchen table, Dick eager to deliver aloud a new "pistol" he'd just discovered by, say, Philip Levine. Mark Gibbons, like Hugo, teaches us how the blue-collar heart, punching in each day for another poetic triple shift, works up an honest sweat."
-Paul Zarzyski, author of Words Growing Wild--a JRP Records CD

"Here are the songs of a man's life: funny, sad, desperate yet resolute."
-David E. Thomas, author of Fossil Fuel and Buck's Last Wreck

"Poetry is the life of a place, of the people and creatures who live there. Mark Gibbons has this life living in him. It is inked onto these pieces of paper, these boiled trees. Honor it."
-Roger Dunsmore, author of Earth's Mind: Essays in Native American Literature

For ordering information go to:
http://www.razorcake.com/gorskypress/ordering/connemara.htm#
or
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0972299718/ref=sr_11_1/102-7771419-7694536?ie=UTF8

Gumball Poetry 1999

Nothing Right or Left

Curtains replaced by a nailed blanket,
Jesus snapped off at the wrists
and ankles, her grandmother's plastic crucifix,
each echo, You worthless son of a bitch.
You did it this time. She's gone.

He pours the rest of the gin on ice,
lights a joint on the electric range,
draws smoke deep, clamps back a cough.
No guts for suicide. He can't shake
the figure of a woman's nude corpse
stretched out on the bedroom floor -
nylons knotted around her neck.

How long has it been since she left him
to sicken and fend for himself?
He picks the scab on the back of his hand.
Blood spatters the counter, his socks,
the floor as he rifles through empty kitchen
drawers for towels he cannot find.

Slumped on a frayed armchair, he becomes
the hum of the refrigerator -
empty as beer bottles at his feet.
Out front a vehicle rolls to a stop.
Gravel pops him upright in his chair.
Dogs bark; a car door squeaks and slams;
sacks crackle in somebody's arms. Spike
heels tap out hope and alarm,
then fade down the sidewalk and are gone.

-Mark Gibbons

For more: http://www.gumballpoetry.com/poetry/gibbons2.html

War Poem

High Noon

For President Bush

Walking the leaf covered street I pause
At the sound of a chopper
In the distance flying fast & low,
Wok-a, wok-a, wok-a, search the sky
For the Life Flight helicopter

I cannot find. Echoing louder & louder, it
Surrounds me: wok-a, wok-a, wok-a.
I see a Huey headed straight for me,
Then another & another, five

Camouflaged choppers, a vee
Flying in perfect formation
About a hundred feet above the trees.
Wok-a, wok-a, wok-a. Overhead,
I consider their payload

As the wing passes, hair rises
On the back of my neck, & in that moment
I'm an Iraqi girl, standing here alone,
& relieved as they move on to their target,
The screaming crowd, wok-a, wok-a, wok-a,

Twenty thousand kick-ass fans, kickoff-ready
To rumble. I know their mission; I've been in that
Stadium, but today I feel lucky to be here
At terror's pre-game show: wok-a, wok-a, wok-a.
If only our machines could save us.

-Mark Gibbons

Gumball Poetry 2002

Larva

I.
They hang in the dark
corner of a room, three black
duffel bag sized sacks
like giant eggplants, upside down,
wrapped in a woven membrane
like a nylon sock. The face
pressed in the bottom of one pouch,
eyelids closed, is a girl I knew
from high school, her hands
still puffy, clammy & cold.
Though always small in stature,
she is the largest of these
intruders, slick bat-like larvae
who wait with me this night to be born.
Lazily she unfolds her almond eyes.
I can't decide if she recognizes me.

II.
My mother has come to visit, now
eighty-three. She wears the winter
coat I remember from the fifties,
carries her snap-lock pocket book
over one wrist, & a Kleenex in her hand
that she uses to dab at her nose.
She looks tired & old as she fights
back tears. When I ask what's wrong,
her voice cracks to a whine.
Her mother's gone. She watched
her die. Slowly & gently
I pull her into me, hold her softly
& rub her back. I kiss her hair
to soothe us, to open our eyes,
so we can bear the uncertainty
of form, our ongoing metamorphosis.

-Mark Gibbons

For more poems see:
http://www.gumballpoetry.com/poetry0210/poetry.php?poe=10368

Drumlummon Views

All My Stories Are Here: Four Montana Poets Ed Lahey, Vic Charlo, Mark Gibbons, and Dave Thomas
by Roger Dunsmore
...Four poets, Ed Lahey, Vic Charlo, Mark Gibbons, and Dave Thomas, all have been here for three generations or more (a thousand generations, at least, in Charlo'’s case), and been here in elemental ways. Their identities are not separate from the place. In Mark Gibbons' words...

For more go to: http://www.drumlummon.org/html/toc.html

Montana Heritage Project

Connemara Moonshine, Mark Gibbons’ first full-length collection, was published by Camphorweed Press in 2002. His earlier collection of poems, Circling Home, won the Scattered Cairns Press chapbook contest. His first collection of poems, published in 1995, was entitled Something Inside Us. His poems have appeared in CutBank, Talking River Review, The Midwest Quarterly, The Comstock Review and Rattle...

For full text see: http://www.montanaheritageproject.org/index.php/institute/mark-gibbons-places-and-their-poetry/