THE CHER SHOW SONNET
I grew up on a farm that was rather exhausting and dull.
It was pretty, with nature, but besides goats, was lonely.
Instead of tractor mechanics, my flight of fancy was prone
to copy more glamorous things and aspire to be beautiful
and imagine the hay wagon that the tractor would pull
to be a stage with a backdrop all mod and so overblown
where I would sing like Cher into the corncob microphone
and I pretended I was in a shocking gown beyond wonderful.
My older brothers would grimace from the feedlot next door
and plot how they might make me quickly leave this earth.
I was an embarrassment to myself, and more so, to them.
They didn't want another whacked-out Cher Show encore
they had no idea the little boy was finding brief mirth
real farm boys don't think about trying to transcend.
PJS
Peter Joseph Swanson was born May 18, 1963.
Born in Cedar Rapids Iowa, the Swanson family moved to a farm north-east of Quincy Illinois while he was still a baby. Swanson graduated from Quincy Senior High in 1981. He attended Culver-Stockton College at Canton Missouri for an Associates in Arts degree before finishing a bachelor’s degree in cinema and fine art at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale Illinois. He now lives in Minneapolis Minnesota.
Swanson was first published in 2001 by Adventure Book Publishers in Calgary Alberta Canada. He wrote and did the watercolor artwork for a children’s e-book, Dinosaur Circus at the Center of the Earth. The publisher went out of business in 2002 and the story is now a part of a collection of children’s stories in Kindle at Amazon, 3 Children’s Stories (and 2 poems).
Swanson wrote and drew the art for a three-panel comic strip, The Joan Comics, inspired by the life of movie star Joan Crawford. It was published in Queue Press, a weekly Minneapolis gay newspaper, from 2002-2005. When the paper went out of business in 2005 the strip ran in a glossy international gay magazine, Outlands, in Reno Nevada, that distributed mainly to the American West, and Israel. The Joan Comics are now published as a collection.
Swanson published Hidden River with e-book publisher Chippewa Publishers in Chippewa Wisconsin, in 2006. The publisher soon went out of business. That novel has now been rewritten as Snake Girl VS the KKK.
Swanson published eight novels with StoneGarden.net Publishers in San Francisco California, in ebook and paperback formats from 2007 to 2013, until they closed. He has since self-published at Amazon: fifteen novels, a book of cartoons, a book of poems, and several children’s books, in paperback and/or Kindle.
Born in Cedar Rapids Iowa, the Swanson family moved to a farm north-east of Quincy Illinois while he was still a baby. Swanson graduated from Quincy Senior High in 1981. He attended Culver-Stockton College at Canton Missouri for an Associates in Arts degree before finishing a bachelor’s degree in cinema and fine art at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale Illinois. He now lives in Minneapolis Minnesota.
Swanson was first published in 2001 by Adventure Book Publishers in Calgary Alberta Canada. He wrote and did the watercolor artwork for a children’s e-book, Dinosaur Circus at the Center of the Earth. The publisher went out of business in 2002 and the story is now a part of a collection of children’s stories in Kindle at Amazon, 3 Children’s Stories (and 2 poems).
Swanson wrote and drew the art for a three-panel comic strip, The Joan Comics, inspired by the life of movie star Joan Crawford. It was published in Queue Press, a weekly Minneapolis gay newspaper, from 2002-2005. When the paper went out of business in 2005 the strip ran in a glossy international gay magazine, Outlands, in Reno Nevada, that distributed mainly to the American West, and Israel. The Joan Comics are now published as a collection.
Swanson published Hidden River with e-book publisher Chippewa Publishers in Chippewa Wisconsin, in 2006. The publisher soon went out of business. That novel has now been rewritten as Snake Girl VS the KKK.
Swanson published eight novels with StoneGarden.net Publishers in San Francisco California, in ebook and paperback formats from 2007 to 2013, until they closed. He has since self-published at Amazon: fifteen novels, a book of cartoons, a book of poems, and several children’s books, in paperback and/or Kindle.