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Hi, I’m Wayne Miller. I’m a poet who lives in Denver, Colorado, and I’m here for Poets on the Plains. Today I’m going to read a poem by the poet Emily Pérez. Pérez grew up in Weslaco, Texas, just a few miles north of the US-Mexico border. She studied at Stanford and the University of Houston before settling in Denver, where she works as a high school teacher and grade-level dean and lives with her husband and their two boys.

This narrative poem presents three characters in a micro-drama – the dad, working under the hood of his Chevy, and who spots the Choctaw man money for a hamburger; Earl the Choctaw man who begs the money; and the kid, "little Wallace" who observes this exchange between father and the struggling man.

Hi, I’m Traci Brimhall, Poet Laureate of Kansas, here for Poets on the Plains. Today I’m excited to share with you a poem by the beloved Kansas poet Michael Kleber-Diggs

Hi. I’m Chera Hammons, a poet from Amarillo, Texas, here for Poets on the Plains. It’s a beautiful morning and the birds are singing. I’m sharing a poem with you today by fellow Texas poet Katherine Hoerth.

These two short poems share a common theme of silence, they suggest a truth beyond words. Something beyond reason. Both poems are short and precise in their structure and are economical in their word choice, their structure and composition reinforcing their theme of something beyond words.

Hi, I’m Traci Brimhall, Poet Laureate of Kansas, here for Poets on the Plains. Today, I’m delighted to share a poem by the Poet Laureate before me, Huascar Medina.

Hi, I’m Matt Mason, I was the State Poet of Nebraska between 2019 and the end of 2024, and I am here for Poets on the Plains. Today, I’m reading and talking about Nebraska poet Clif Mason’s poem “Texts from the Dead.”

Hi, I’m Wayne Miller. I’m a poet who lives in Denver, Colorado, and I’m here for Poets on the Plains. Today I’m going to read a poem by the poet Laura Hershey. Hershey was born in 1962 in Littleton, Colorado, and as a young child was diagnosed with Spinal Muscular Atrophy, a rare genetic disease. She used a wheelchair throughout her life.

This is a short lyrical poem, which makes use of the five senses – smell being the dominant sense. In addition to smell, we can see the sycamore, we can feel the wind moving about the speaker in the poem, through her. We can hear the wind in the sycamores. And we can almost taste the cumulative effect as it saturates the speaker of the poem.

I'm often referred to as a Nature Poet, and I admit that that term makes me uneasy, because I do write about social issues and other topics, but mainly because it might suggest an easy sentimentality, with which I don't want to be associated.