Jeff Schiff is the author of That hum to go by (Mammoth Books, 2012), Mixed Diction, Burro Heart, The Rats of Patzcuaro, The Homily of Infinitude, and Anywhere in this Country. His work has appeared internationally in more than eighty periodicals, including The Alembic, Grand Street, The Ohio Review, Poet & Critic, The Louisville Review, Tendril, Pembroke Magazine, Carolina Review, Chicago Review, Hawaii Review, Southern Humanities Review, River City, Indiana Review, Willow Springs,and The Southwest Review. He has been a professor in the Department of English and Creative Writing at Columbia College Chicago since 1987.
Notes from the Black Walnut Kingdom
No vintage shellers required
no tool and die rigs
no carbide drill bits
nor boards with husk-sized holes
through which to pound
your mottled stash
no Buick to back and forth
across the windfalls
mounding the driveway
A 24 ouncer works best
if you have one
Square on
nothing practiced
a framing hammer
dropped
from the shoulder
whack & shuck
a five gallon utility pail
Good riddance scavenger radicals
Buongiorno black walnut biscotti
Bienvenue nutmeat pâté—
Welcome the oily stigma
of jipped chipmunks
& outwitted coons
Jeff Schiff