Alaskan & Western Reflections

                                                       by                                        Jerry Dale McDonnell©2014                                             Published in  Mungbeing.com #59          This is the dance. My legs are encased in rubber up to my crotch, water very close to breaking over the tops of my hip waders plays a light sloshing tune, my feet try a few soft shoe steps for balance in the mud that is almost up to my ankles. My left foot is near the bank. My right foot is near the deeper water of Shelter Creek. My left arm is stretched straight out grasping a handful of soil and tall grass on the bank, which is level with my chin, allowing my right arm to hold the 32-foot boat close to the bank. My focus is on the Alaskan Coastal Brown Bear twenty feet away. Christ on the cross comes to mind. The brown bear, as brown bears do, is pretending to be oblivious to we spectators. He or she, or as the animal correct, “it” (I think “it” is a boar) is grazing o

by Jerry D. McDonnell©2006                                                       Published in  Dan River Anthology, 2006                 Fish guts, salmon and halibut. Hands slimed. The flesh vacuum packed. The cleaning table washed off with a hose. Tubs full of slimy fish guts and skeletons—carcasses—lay disemboweled in the tubs beneath the cleaning table. If it was war it would be worthy of a Matthew Brady photograph, a still of death, but there was no visible emotion. Like war, you handle it.                 That’s the way it is near the top of the food chain. Alaska is meat country. Vegetables are the luxury of people in Anchorage or further south in milder climates. Even Alaskan herbivores are a tough breed. I, being an omnivore, wanted to be a part of it. I couldn’t remember when it had started. Maybe when I was a little boy on the Mississippi River and saw that big catfish Grandpa caught. That fish was so big it could have eaten a little boy like myself. After th

Published in Explorations, ©Jerry D. McDonnell, 2000 Anchorage, Alaska; September. 1993 He said he was sorry. Some people believed him. The judge didn't. He was still a teenager . . . eighteen.   They gave him sixty-five years. No trial. West of Dillingham, Alaska; March 1976. The view from under the bed is limited: six shoes on the bare boards,   the empty whiskey bottle spinning crazily. The gun-shot explodes; cringing, he holds his ears, his mouth frozen open. A body slams to the floor. The bottle stops spinning against the fallen face of his older brother whose cheek is smashed up against his eye, his tongue hanging from the open mouth. A second shot rocks the bare, wood walls of the tar-paper shack; he flinches, banging his head on the bed springs and bites his tongue in terror tasting his own blood. Another body shakes the room as it hits the floor; the face of his older sister twitches as it hammers into the bare wood.   Dead, his brother stares at Joseph u