Karl Elder’s “Brush Strokes,” an acrostic of 100 syllables composed at the invitation of Nimrod International Journal from the University of Tulsa in celebration of Oklahoma’s centennial and the journal’s 50th anniversary, appears in Doing the Hundreds at 50, an anthology containing work from 100 writers from across the nation.
Brush Strokes
One honey of a dreaded count’s one shy:
ninety-nine when, Dude, you’re the lone shepherd
even a Stetson from Sheppler’s don’t hide.
Heck, what with her digital glowing 1:00
under your silver dollar sun, it’s time
now you pen yourself in, 10 x 10—Lord
damn that lost heifer, the whole herd, before
red becomes you and you become rawhide—
escape to her room, your phantom cowgirl
doing her hair, whom you pine with rime for.