{"id":14484,"date":"2016-10-07T12:05:56","date_gmt":"2016-10-07T18:05:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=14484"},"modified":"2016-10-08T09:01:02","modified_gmt":"2016-10-08T15:01:02","slug":"from-this-years-grand-slam-winner-a-look-at-butte","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2016\/10\/from-this-years-grand-slam-winner-a-look-at-butte\/","title":{"rendered":"From this year’s Grand Slam winner, a look at Butte"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Lost\"<\/a>

From the book “Lost Butte, Montana.”<\/p><\/div>\n

Editor’s note<\/strong>: The seventh annual High Plains Grand Slam, a poetry competition held in conjunction with the High Plains BookFest, played out\u00a0Thursday night before a standing-room-only crowd at the MoAv Coffee House.<\/em><\/p>\n

With 14 competitors entered in the verbal throwdown, it was the largest and without a doubt the best slam we’ve seen here in Billings. The winner\u2014and now the first person to\u00a0<\/em>have won the title twice\u2014was Pete Tolton, of Billings.<\/em><\/p>\n

In second place was Molly Ouellette, of Billings, and in third was Jawney Love, of Bozeman. Among the poems we heard Thursday night, our favorite was Tolton’s take on Butte, which we are publishing here with his permission:<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Uptown<\/h3>\n

I\u2019m walkin\u2019 uptown
\nGot shin splints and an empty cup
\nChin up, chin up
\nDrink up, drink up<\/p>\n

Fare thee gentlemens
\nMy reflection
\nTarnished and fractured
\nIn shop windows shattered
\nRain\u2019s comin\u2019 in<\/p>\n

Past hotels that didn\u2019t last
\nBars that did
\nChurches kept up, but barely, kid
\nArt deco high rises shame the hasty new builds
\nOnce, there was opportunity in these hills<\/p>\n

Who\u2019s that wrenchin\u2019 on the hurdy-gurdy
\nEchoin\u2019 down the alleys of O\u2019Malleys
\nEvel Knievels, Awful Knofels
\nPummelin\u2019 in the tunnels
\nFillin\u2019 the coffers
\nBastards, bawlers, and brawlers
\nThe arsonist\u2019s daughter
\nSold water buckets just down the way<\/p>\n

Talkin\u2019 out of school
\nTellin\u2019 tales from the crypt
\nStrip by strip by strip<\/p>\n

Walkin\u2019 Walkerville,
\nOnly saw dogs and kids
\nFront doors
\nswingin\u2019 in the wind,
\nCreaking that strange wail,
\nAnd every goddamn thing\u2019s for sale<\/p>\n

Fixed incomes with all the fixins,
\nCracked linoleum, leaning kitchen
\nToppling chimney, pile of bricks ‘n
\nAn old Crown Vic, plates from \u201906 ‘n
\nHeard some folks got rich \u2018n
\nEverybody else left stitchin\u2019
\nHand-me downs patches on britches
\nNow village of the listless<\/p>\n

Retired dynamite,
\nRestless elevator shafts
\nLooming headframes,
\nProsperity long passed<\/p>\n

Who got steel in their toes
\nWho kept their calluses
\nWho\u2019s hangin\u2019 around
\nThis trickle-down town
\nStill-life, this is still life, stuck in paralysis<\/p>\n

If that canary croaked a death knell
\nlong before prices fell
\nWhat song would it sing?
\nRather than drifting
\nInto cadmium dream
\nCatching manganese zees
\nIn the copper light of the morning<\/p>\n

Open wounds are hard to ignore
\nI kept one eye on the pit,
\nIt\u2019s an easy fix
\nJust put a catheter on it
\nPeel off that bandaid real slow
\nStrip by strip by strip<\/p>\n

But hell, we could wind
\nThis earth in wire
\nLine by line
\nElectrify
\nGive these poor people some light to see by
\nStrip by strip by strip
\nChin up, chin up
\nDrink up, drink up
\nStrip by strip by strip<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Editor’s note: The seventh annual High Plains Grand Slam, a poetry competition held in conjunction with the High Plains BookFest, played out\u00a0Thursday night before a standing-room-only crowd at the MoAv Coffee House. With 14 competitors entered in the verbal throwdown, it was the largest and without a doubt the best slam we’ve seen here in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":14486,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[31,5018,1421],"class_list":["post-14484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","tag-butte","tag-high-plains-grand-slam","tag-pete-tolton","prominence-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14484\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}