Axe, Fire, Mule

The collection contains fifty-one poems divided into five sections, each (except the truncated last) containing eleven poems. The first section, Ozark Dark, introduces the rocky landscape and heavy mud of the Ozarks, the coyotes, bobcats, and deep poverty with which farm families cope. In the second section, Marooned, Albin sketches moments in the lives of people born into Ozark ways--ways which they accept and sometimes celebrate. At a family reunion, for example, “work-worn men” who’ve spent an afternoon churning ice cream “lean marooned on porch steps,” listening to their children play. Section three, Axe, Fire, Mule, features farmers determining what must be done, and doing it: hefting hay bales, moving stones, repairing an old fiddle, watching deer, dealing with flood and drought. ( In “Burn Ban” the speaker accepts a neighbor’s defiance of the ban, because the proud old man has always done slash-and-burn farming.) The poems in section four, Rose of Sharon, are from a teacher’s point of view; he sees Latino immigrants bravely learning English while local racists sneer; he watches downsized factory workers and Iraq veterans struggle to figure out where they belong. In the final section, Will and Testament, an octogenarian, “Cicero Jack” reflects on his Ozarks. Its riverlands, once home to the Osage, are now littered with drunken tourists, and prized by land developers. Though his grandkids think he’s “a mule,” and he knows change is inevitable, Cicero Jack wills his city-dwelling heirs something more free and valuable than “bass boats and bank accounts.”

Eight photographs done by the author's sister, Kelli Albin, enhance the visual impact of the poetry.