Outlaw Canon
On first glance, much about Bobby BlueJacket: The Tribe, The Joint, The Tulsa Underworld is suspect: the absurd length ...
Joshua Kline
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BlueJacket, Inside Out
Part 4, Section 1 — Bobby BlueJacket and Bobby Wilson strolled across the Stone Brothers Buick car lot under lines ...
Michael P. Daley
This Land Presents: Dead Sea Choir – “Nemesis”
Dead Sea Choir performs " Nemesis" at Church Studios in Tulsa, ...
Stuart Hetherwood
This Land Presents: Wink Burcham – “Town in Oklahoma”
Wink Burcham performs " Town in Oklahoma " at Church Studios in Tulsa, ...
Stuart Hetherwood
This Land Films Presents: Far Western Official Trailer
Amid the ashes of post-WWII Japan, the bittersweet sounds of American traditional country music drifted through the ...
Stuart Hetherwood
Public Secrets: Sex Pistols
Public Secrets delves into the infamous Sex Pistols show at the Cain's ...
Stuart Hetherwood
An important message from This Land Press
Dear readers, At This Land Press, we’ve decided to take a timeout from our magazine as the ...
Vincent LoVoi
The Ballad of Sis Cunningham
In late May 1940, Woody Guthrie was riding high in New York City. Although Guthrie had already made a name for himself ...
Richard Higgs
Agnes Taylor
Agnes Taylor’s family album is full of hardscrabble farmers, war heroes, and football champions—she’s a ...
Jeremy Charles
Hope
In the woods, in the deep hole I dug, beneath the power cable and the roots of box elder trees, down among the ...
Gordon Grice
The Siren and the Savior
Republican Clarence Tylee, from Okmulgee County, spoke loudly so everyone on the House floor and the gallery above ...
Tim Berry
For This Time, At Least
As darkness descends, this time in-between, when stars are not yet lit, the moon lingering far away, I ...
Ken Hada
Stalking the Smoking Gun
Every so often, perhaps once a week, the Oklahoma State Senate closes its doors, posts aging sentries outside in the ...
David Fritze
Love, Lennie
Like most of our peers, my brother and I were big fans of the TV sitcom The Odd Couple when we were growing up in ...
Charles Morrow
Hay Maker
By mechanics, lanes of yellow vanish into the bailer’s munching mouth, while out the other end, like some ...
Sandy Hiortdahl
Starlight
To fans of classic films the name Jennifer Jones evokes images of a brunette beauty with distinctive high cheekbones, ...
Les Howell
Oklahoma: Land of Gore
Sometimes the gore tumbles from the cottonwood trees on the South Canadian River. Those were squirrels, shot by dad ...
Dale Ingram
The Secret Wheat Deal
In 1968, Richard Nixon began calling for an end to the Vietnam War. As a candidate for the presidency in 1968, he gave ...
James C. Thomas
Last Nice Day
There is a television channel that only shows the live radar, and my parents watch it the way other people watch ...
Meg Thompson
Dream Catcher
“And where are you from?” The inevitable vacation question. And I want to say Not that Oklahoma, The one you ...
Xandra Kaste
Death Under the Strawberry Moon
By 1794, the Cherokees were settling in the West in growing numbers, and conflict with the Osage over hunting rights ...
James Murray
The Pacifist Preacher & Quanah Parker
The Fourth Cavalry mustered at the gates of Fort Concho in San Angelo, Texas. Led by Colonel Ranald Mackenzie, the ...
Jay Cyril Mastrud
The Anti-Okie Panic
In the public discourse, the desperate people pouring over the border in search of work were described as an “influx ...
Thomas Conner
The Time I Shot Donald Trump
There was a year—I don’t remember the exact one but definitely around the height of his new-found celebrité in ...
Juan Reinoso
Disrespectfully Yours
In December 1950, Woody Guthrie and his family rented an apartment in the Beach Haven apartment complex in Brooklyn, ...
Barry Friedman
Trust Me
I used to think the funniest thing I’d ever heard Donald Trump say was when, one day in his office, he handed me a ...
Mark Singer
Leaning
At the 2016 Republican National Convention, which I covered for Flavorwire, I said (perhaps too optimistically) to ...
Tatiana Ryckman
Mathematical Traditions
American Indians generally have had a pragmatic orientation to the use and study of mathematics. In most Indian ...
Chris Landon
Our Own Formulas
The 27th of May, 1949, was a momentous day for Louis “Speedy” Wiley, my grandfather. In the span of 24 hours, he ...
Apollonia Piña
Okie Islam
In late March 1963, field minister Arthur 7-X held a press conference in Oklahoma City. Nation of Islam travelers had ...
James Murray
Challengers of the Dust
Guymon, Oklahoma, 1935 I stepped off the westbound Santa Fe passenger train and entered Barsoom. Four ...
William Bernhardt
The Old Ways
In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars were ...
Annie Heartfield Hartzog
‘Til the Clowns Come Home
Passing Oaklawn Cemetery, on our way to Mazzio’s, Michelle made her request: “Mitch, can you take off your hat?” ...
Mitch Gilliam
Firelight Along the Frontier
Flames rushed skyward from a structure less than a mile away across the sagebrush. At the height of another dry desert ...
Michael Canyon Meyer
The Atonement of Christie
Was Nede Wade “Ned” Christie a bloody outlaw or a wrongfully accused Cherokee patriot? That was the question in ...
Kent F. Frates
The Native Hue of Resolution
The Riverside Indian School is perched on a hill along the Washita River in the wind-whipped town of Anadarko, ...
Marcos Barbery
The Skunk Paint Years
It’s customary to begin with introductions amongst the Sioux. Even though this is a one-sided introduction—and ...
Marcus Bush
A New Day
Last September in the town of Bartlesville, 15-year-old Blue Haase got a ride to his local school board meeting. During ...
Molly Bullock
In My Tribe
A childhood summer afternoon is thrown into relief. I’m 10 years old. My big sister Kat and I are spending the day ...
Jezy J. Gray
The Greatest of Wrongs
The initial idea of the compilation of this work was to give the reading public an authentic record of the private life ...
Geronimo and S.M. Barrett
Home Territory
We headed south from McAlester to the Texas border in early morning. The day was blazing hot, humid, no wind. Typical ...
Rilla Askew
Imagine There’s No Cowboy
Indians on horseback have been stampeding across the television screen all afternoon. It’s the mid-1960s, so maybe ...
LeAnne Howe
The Mummy of John Wilkes Booth
"My ashes, as the phoenix, may bring forth A bird that will revenge upon you all." — William ...
Gordon Grice
Safe
Added a padlock to the fence, I am safe, nine different passwords, I am secure. New model with ...
Landry Harlan
Everyone’s Darling
Old Carlos squinted into the sun and grinned. “Come in,” he said and swung the door open and stepped aside, tilting ...
Richard Higgs
Summer Leaving Oklahoma Before the Advent of Global Warming
Some morning in late September he’d stumble in the diner ragged as a dandelion in a dust storm: ripped ...
Nick Norwood
Surviving and Sustaining at Gosney Farms
One night in 1997, a concerned neighbor called John and Kris (Ratzlaff) Gosney of Cheyenne Valley, Oklahoma, with a ...
R.E. Graalman Jr.
Plane Cowboy
The man in a yellow shirt behind me His head too close to mine above worn navy-blue faux-leather, above the ...
Shandhini Raidoo
Haul
Their two-ton Jimmy staggers now, rolls and wobbles on creaky springs, creeping over berms on a ...
Nick Norwood
The Piano Player
For a divorced woman getting by as a music teacher in 1921, Patti Adams Shriner achieved an incredibly bold ambition ...
Scott Pendleton
Katie Rain Hill
Katie Rain Hill is a commitment-phobe. She’s recently finished a degree in anthropology and sociology with a minor ...
This Land
In Transit
My alarm was set for 7:00 am, and when I woke up, it felt like Christmas morning. My boyfriend’s mom, Denise, ...
Katie Rain Hill
The Cyclone
It was Sunday afternoon, April 3, 1892, still and sultry, with a black cloud lying ominously back in the west and ...
Francis Moore Milburn
Weather You Care
A colorful sign reads, “MOTEL Reno.” The sky is dark with clouds in an array of white and black. Rain patters the ...
Mason Powell
Down Through There
I took a moment to see all my friends and Brothers one last time, then I was off to the laundry. My closest Brothers ...
Jimmy Maxwell
How to Arrest the Increase of Homicides in America
It must be conceded that we are in a peculiar condition in this nation today—in such a condition that, in my ...
Liam Carey
At Risk
While driving to a visit in Adair County on an early afternoon in the rolling hills of a northeastern Oklahoma winter, ...
Christopher Murphy
Rhyme & Punishment
I come to David L. Moss every week to teach poetry to incarcerated women. It’s become so routine that all of the ...
Beth Niestemski
Kurt Vonnegut’s Oklahoma Eden
On a warm day in December, Woolaroc ranch hands are rounding up the bison for the annual inspection and culling. A ...
Ginger Strand
Land of Grand Librarians
Every day an imposing shadow strides across our nation’s capital from the largest library in the world. While the ...
Larry Guthrie
This Alley
May 2013, Oklahoma County Highway’s littered – Broken wasp mid upturned beetles, kindling ...
Allison Adelle Hedge Coke
Then
Black Blizzard—hundreds of thousands of years to create the topsoil. Red from Oklahoma, Texas grey, brown Nebraska. ...
Allison Adelle Hedge Coke
My Uncle Was an Astro Zombie!
My uncle was an astro zombie. I know you don’t believe me. No one does. When I whisper it to my neighbors, their ...
Dale Ingram
A Childhood Noir
My earliest recollections are of being pinched. Not in the figurative sense, but actually. I was an awkward, ...
Jim Thompson
Eschatology
The neighborhood dogs are barking again: a chain letter cha-cha-cha that begins blocks away and rolls through the ...
Markham Johnson
Transcending the Curriculum
I arrived at Ada Junior High School 15 minutes early. I walked past the football team, heard the whistle shrilling, the ...
Ken Hada
It’s Too Late
For the houseboat in Amsterdam. The snake of blue through the city will wind without me turn to ice ...
Britton Gildersleeve
Rideshare vs. Car Ownership
Rideshare services like Uber or Lyft are most often seen as a substitute for a taxicab—a safe ride home after a night ...
Michael D. Bates
The Green Glacier
I saw that the name you put to a thing depended on where you stood and where it stood. And… and here’s the ...
Kyle Walker
Original Okie: Lisa Regan
Lisa Regan taught herself metalwork with welding tools borrowed from a mechanic friend with an auto body ...
This Land
The Gates of Tunis
Sometimes during the unending nothingness of prison days, I imagine what our lives would have been like if Jens ...
Keija Parssinen
No One From Here Gets Out Alive
Last week I got the phone call. You know the call I’m talking about: the one that concludes your favorite book and ...
Chris Sandel
Two Ways of Looking at a Turkey Vulture
One: After work one day, I lay on the couch beneath the picture window. Outside, the Siberian elms tossed their ...
Gordon Grice
Hair Squared
When Vidal Sassoon realized in the 1950s that he wanted to “change hairdressing to a different form of art,” he ...
Marcia Beauchamp
Oil Change
Oil filters into fingertips and under my nails, stains my callouses, clothes, driveway. Now it’s five ...
Randall Weiss
What the Thunder Said
This story was made possible in part by our friends at City of Guthrie. Thank you, City of Guthrie, for supporting ...
Bayard Godsave
Isolation Is the Gift
This story was made possible in part by our friends at City of Guthrie. Thank you, City of Guthrie, for supporting ...
Mitch Gilliam
An Oklahoma Son Airs His Family Secrets
By the early 1970s, the writer John Cheever had slipped beyond alcoholic; his prodigious drinking had likely caused ...
Adrian Margaret Brune
I’m Doing a Thing
Eric Fransen is a carpenter who has a woodworking studio in downtown Tulsa. At one point in his past, he was pursuing a ...
This Land
The Horror in the Ouachita Mountains
This story was made possible in part by our friends at City of Guthrie. Thank you, City of Guthrie, for supporting ...
James McGirk
Dixie Michell
Born and raised in New Orleans, musician and luthier Dixie Michell’s design sensibility grew from a childhood passion ...
This Land
Fieldless Rhythms
They always played together. They made their own teams. He’d played since he could remember, before he even had a ...
Rhiannon Poolaw
Fireflies
Behind the backyard in red gold afternoon, shadows from the freeway wash against the side of forty-year-old homes ...
David Beebe
The Miracle of ‘Mass’
My wife and I drove the handful of miles from our beloved 92-year-old bungalow in Mesta Park to the Oklahoma City Civic ...
Jake Johnson
What Rhymes with Hideous Car Wreck?
Before he was recognized by Forbes as one of the world’s wealthiest hip-hop stars, before Jim Morrison and The Doors ...
James Benjamin
Q & A with Bryant Oden
Oklahoma native and Rocky Mountain transplant Bryant Oden has made a career of writing goofy songs for ...
This Land
Lee Makes the Flowers Grow
West of Sand Springs, Oklahoma, on old Highway 51, past the grounds of the razed Hissom asylum, stand two stoplights. ...
Mitch Gilliam
The Filth and the Fury
Although Tulsa’s Cain’s Ballroom later became famous for catching future superstars like U2, The Police, and Van ...
John Wooley & Brett D. Bingham
A Ride With Bob
Confession time: Based on how huge an influence Bob Wills has always been on Asleep at the Wheel, you might think that ...
Ray Benson
Cain’s
Down at the music floor where they sell beer with plastic collars and gauges hide under mullets next to ...
Casie Trotter
Hitting the Cheno Note
click to enlarge Originally published in This Land: Fall ...
Denny Mask
On the Mystery Train with JD McPherson
Everybody knows Robert Johnson sold his soul to the Devil at a Mississippi crossroads one fateful midnight and gained ...
Brian Ted Jones
The Bicyclist
Your sweat falls in drops dotting the trail on a map, in a tour along the river, beside the irrigated ...
Frank Graham
Radio Revival
Somewhere in between the mindless banter of sports talk radio, the bubblegum lyrics of top 40 hits, and the NPR ...
Gail Banzet-Ellis
Chet Baker’s Return
night club no time lighted juke box music, pockets of muffled chatter from expectant patrons scatter ...
Paul Austin
Trespassing Oklahoma
I. When I heard the shots—two quick bursts of three—I realized I’d lost track of my dog. A pickup about 300 ...
Richard Higgs
Bookstores of the Big Middle
I take vacations based around bookstores. Other attractions (museums, concerts, culinary destinations) certainly factor ...
Jeff Martin
School Spirits
Thep Phongparnich slinks into the conference room on Maejo University in the northern Thailand city of Chiang Mai, and ...
Kristi Eaton
Old Toy Trains, Little Toy Tracks
In an unremarkable field north of Route 66 sits a small collection of metal memorabilia, including a cactus, a Martian, ...
Rhys Martin
Borrowed Traditions
This past June, the Japanese fiddler Okano Susumu1 celebrated his 59th birthday by taking time out from a work trip to ...
Denis Gainty