we'd been walking, you see, through this field.
next to a bridge an old woman had splayed herself in the green grass.
her eyes were closed.
we circled like big hungry birds wheeling in the blue sky. i touched her:
Maam, are you alright?
she started awake: my my, I'd just got so...tired....so very tired in this heat.thank you kindly. reckon I'll get on home.

she had a haze of holiness--or was it pollen--like guadalupe's halo on a cheap candle burning its mortal wick. her and i, we didnt need to say nothing further, both knowing it wont be long till her body is no longer flesh but carrion in actuality: next time it will be real buzzards prodding her to wake and knowing that she wont.

to be wild

next time you need me. i’ll be standing at the edge of your town, brown, behind heaving swarms of june bugs as the sun sinks.
when you need me with your skin soft and perfumed on the concrete, i will will myself to forget your form from behind the trees. i will drop my words and my gaze
with my dripping sweat like any old bastard, take a second look at my battered boots that are breaking up in the long shadows, and let it go
back towards the new moon rising over a warm-breathed forest that is vast and still in the evening heat.

May dreams: Under the falling sky

I woke up and it was revelations, my body ablaze with insects, the meek standing hungry at the threshold.
some of us known this day was a long time coming, the weight of so many days like this finally breaking the back of a world whose bruises and fractures had already mottled its skin past the turning point.
but upon rupture there was also this last rapture:
a brief moment of reckoning, of seeing light from the dark cooling earth beneath my stone. so here I held my bones close, awake,
and it was a blessing just to call
my savior’s name.

paradise

at last the tide comes in
bringing the empty bottles to shore. the sand polishes the lables till the glass glistens like jellyfish or other smooth treasures wreathed in
tangled seaweed, fishscales and the rest that been cast aside.

now their small mouths call to me above the surf, begging my lips for a kiss, and god willing
these spirits would wet my tongue and burn down my body.
i am so thirsty
never mind them bottles are empty inside save for a little sea salt
nevermind bottles on the beach are supposed to have other messages,
i dont figure i could read em in the dark      anyway.

the trapper

he was always walking in like he ownd the place, looking deep into every pair of brown eyes with this deep desire to take:
with long strong hands he would be grabbing them up, holding his mouth close
to breathe in and out their scent of unconquered forests, heavy lidded &thick green.

he struts another step forward, consumed with greed to grab her wrists, which snap like a tree falling

and it is then that the mud starts to run in earnest off the newly naked mountainsides. the sound roars like fresh laid railroad tracks cutting through the night, a blade that parts the plains with waves of wheels and pestilence.

behind them you could smell the grass beginning to burn,
the people scattering like ashes into the sky.

days of a g**

god knows you could get used to this--the new heft of some .38 heat stuck down your jeans. hell, it couldve belonged to someone’s dead grandfather
and maybe you traded a drunk a bottle of hootch for its cold oiled barrel digging into your skin.

upon contact with the revolver's worn wooden handle, your body goes electric with a great reckoning of scale: life and death shrink and grow like the plain shadow of your hand on the wood planks out back.
you imagine that the birds have stopped singing.
even the light thru the window bends away a little from this heavy thing resting with a dead weight on your thigh.

but you remind yourself that you would never actually…as you pull a long shirt down. in the mirror there is your split lip pulling into a grimace, and this slow building probability of lightning clouds in your eyes.

your woman

is waiting for you with shimmering eyelids and soft plentiful body under rough cotton sheets

back home.
so why you always finding yourself here with these skinny white girls instead? they look about to disappear like thin threads of opium suspended in a dark room just before someone opens the door.
and maybe thats it--you was just dizzy with the smoke,
unable to speak once wrappd in the bony arms of these well-shod ghosts with mist shrouding their delicate painted feet.

we both know that in the end you will wind up hand- full and empty-eyed
as pale milk starts to spill in the gutter.

The fall of standing cloud

I was still soaking wet from a hot shower when you called.
“Natalie.” you deadpanned. “I am hangin down with these people, Puerto Ricans maybe, and they was jokin about my friend who jumped under the train a few years ago. I told you about that. And now they fuckin jokin about him. Natalie. I am tired. I am old and tired and I aint sober and I lost my higher power. And Darnell jumped in front of that train, he just straight jumped... over in a quick second, it probably didnt even stop.”

I blink and my words come out strangely, “Please listen to me when I say this cause these days I am hardly never impressed with people and even more rarely do I say so if I am. But you, your strength is earth shaking. For the love of god, dont fall down now….it aint time yet. hold on to your higher power.” and I shiver in my towel from the chill leaking under the rotting back door.

“Natalie. Everyone is always sayin that I am strong. I aint strong. Im just fuckin alive. And Natalie I am tired. It is always this hard, it just dont never get fucking easier and I am too old. I cant even see my grandson. I am so tired. Come on, you always paintin those pictures back in your room, well paint this: a little girl, tired and dirty, dirty teddybear and dark brown hair. And a big heart. Paint that and you will know.”
You are very drunk by now. You pause, gulp something, breathe heavy, and continue:
“You made me that CD for the bus ride and I listen to it and that makes me happy but underneath, those songs you played for me back at the lodge was so sad. and I feel it in you, that sadness under you. I say, damn that girls been through a lot, been through some shit. but listen to me, goddamn it, would you fucking listen to me, I know you aint listening!!! dont let it get you like this, dont take my fuckin way, cause look a me I aint happy Natalie I am so fuckin tired and Im just like when you finally hike that appalacian mountain trail or whatever you call it think of me, girl.”
Through the static reception and the Puerto Ricans laughing in the background I swear I hear a train start clacking down the tracks.

the Denver gentlemen

"Hey girl, what are you drinkin, and why you lookin so down? Come on, make that fine face of yours smile, it's more becoming!
Oh, youre workin out on the rez huh?
Hows that goin for you? chaos, right?and welfare! What about you, surviving on charity tonight like the rest, right? I bet you want me to buy you a drink. Shit, I bet right now we're on sacred land stolen from the indians! [laughter from wingmen] Comeon, I'm not trying to insult you or nothin, dont look at me like that! Cheers to the land!God bless america! Drink up, girl!"

The walls and the irony and tight jeans suddenly close in on me and I slam my club soda on the table and grab up my coat and set my jaw as they turn to watch my body leave. Outside this grief wells in my chest and I start home down Colfax walking too fast.

eagle killer

is an epithet around here.
An eagle killer cant wait for the feathers to fall-one-by-one from the sky; no, he needs needs needs a whole sacred handful now just like them first pale washichu who stalked the land.

and sunday I was walkin down by the cattails and the geese when I seen a pair of bald eagles sitting still by the water in a naked oak. They were calm, well-fed, but as I moved towards them they looked at me with a certain weariness.
A few more steps and they spread their wings as wide as my height
and took off in separate directions: Southbound flew herself in slow circle towards the hills; Northward came over me and up and as his shadow swept languidly over the lake, a thousand floating geese startled and the sky filled with birds.

Id just begun pushing through the brush to find a feather under their tree--didnt have but ten feet more to walk--when gunshots echoed close over the water and I had to turn my head to run.

into the deep freeze

Well, you see, Id noticed a recent element of instability in her movements—
she was of late prone to pacing in the evening like there was worn out gears under her hunching back. 'you gonna fall, gonna fall, gonna fall, you pathetic fucking disgrace,' she chanted and chanted as she eased her failing legs across the living room boards. As I recall, they creaked loudly in the cold under her weight. She paused at the sound;
then there was a long silence punctuated with snaps as they settled back into the freezing night. I called the ambulance at dawn.

the brass plate and a drum memorial

Outside the old 4H building the farm equipment is slowly sinking like dinosaur skeletons into tarpits. Even with their flat tires and diesel engines heaving towards the ground they are still things that look hungry and howl as the north wind blasts through their gears and scythes carrying their cold metal in its teeth. the wind breathes up dirt and almost-snow to blow it through the long pens to bite the livestock...

but now there aint even a hoofprint to be seen; the sheep long since been sold
and the cows don't give milk no more for the arthritic hands of gnarled farmers who are themselves fossilizing under their quilts back in the hills somewhere. theres no Now here. Shit, even the brass name plates up front havent been updated since EDNA SOMMERS 1988.

however. tonight the lights are all on, and you step inside the 4H hall and it's more people even then youd see at the twice-weekly AA meetings, more people since the last great farm wife gave up the ghost and gingerbread squaredances some time back.

The big room is warm and packed and it smells like stew and wet winter jackets. There's frybread going and women four times my age are sitting in metal fold-up chairs, telling jokes in Dakota, and laughing rusty laughs.

Their many dozen greatgrandchildren are dancing around to the drum in the corner which is beating so deep the linoleum is shaking. The younger kids have started their own ritual of knocking over sodas, getting more cake, repeat.

Then suddenly the drum stops, the room falls silent and draws in a breath.
those up front start this low song that builds and charges the air with all the aching heaviness of the time we have that never stops moving even as our tongues fall away,this thing that keeps walking past all this taken land to leave everyone eventually.

rush turn

a wolf indoors is not a dog. a wolf indoors is
still a wolf: striped with scars from the fights, eyes that seen kills, a nose that been buried in things spilling apart back in godless black night allyways. its gray tail might wag on the kitchen floor-- but a wolf indoors is
not a dog. I just turned off the tv and looked up behind me to find that the tail has stopped and its walkin soft now in the lamplight with switchblades for teeth. stupid me let it get between the door& my seat before i recalled that this wolf is
not a tame animal whose slow walk is suddenly snapping forward like steelmuscled trap wild blood run for my throat.

the white horse [revis'd]

growing up I remember some scripture saying satan and his horses was pale. so I always saw him as pale and fine-boned with the eyes a dead giveaway.
now his sister—a deadringer if I ever seen one—is standing in the kitchen with cheekbones that could cut glass, staring at me, running her narrow tongue across red lips.
the way the light filters through the heavy nylon curtains and fills the hollows of her lovely face moves me, inexplicably, almost to tears of joy or ruin. it is hard to say which as
I watch the long bone of her thin wrist twist in the fading light to open the Ramen for me;I take it stupid and thick as a lamb deep in the wolf.
the water comes to a boil and I toss the noodles in and we are suspended for a moment, facing dark-to-dark in the late october evening. a step closer and anyone could see that her eyes is full of beautiful black water like a sea that is strangely luminous under a moonless midnight.I remember I dreamt yesterday that both her cold hands was on my face with my tongue pulled deep and feeling the sharp edges of her carnivore teeth..

we snap out of it as her kid falls down the back steps. she walks out calm and comes back with the girl on her shoulder howling like a banshee. I creep out unnoticed and lock my door but the walls are still howling like a banshee and I'm burning alive in my cheap flannel sheets. I close my eyes that wont close knowin that shell be riding pale white horses til they lather with sweat over my dreams.

vacilando heart

blues like your worn out shoes in the dead tired end of main st. town with its battered plywood windows,
blues like the bar with no sign but Bud Lite alight behind the glass,
and them real hard time blues like your woman with her neck wrung and still steaming down by the James headwater this first freezing night of the fall,
behind your trailer which is coming down on itself in this prison scented with whiskey breath and empty sky. youre just pacing there, caged behind cheap vinyl siding, not saying much to this land of bluffs and buffalo rolling weak kneed into an oblivion of ancestors that the sunset burns alive over and over till there aint even a memory of ashes.

and thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed:

Leaning against his dented truck, this old timer runs a tired hand through his gray whiskers and pulls up his jacket against the wind which is cutting its first fall teeth.
Behind us the husks of STRAIN RB34™ are rustling behind their laminated trademark placard. Each row has a different trademark and all the plants are dead, except for a spray of insubordinate white wildflowers on the other side of the fence.
He tips up his trucker hat and wipes his forehead. “This thing is not, this crop is not a wholesome crop,” he finally mutters with his tongue filling in for the missing teeth.

Back to Donna

The phone rings in the kitchen and I answer it and stay in view of the stove so I can watch the meat fry.
You say, Oh Donna’s real sick, blood coming out of her ear, I tell you she just doesn’t care even with her kidneys shot she’s still out there drinking margaritas. Well now she has one of those, what do you call them, an-yer-isms, maybe a few, and she called and said she has blood coming out of her ear, and I was like, shit just chill out and I’ll be there at the end of the month. But it’s coming out of her ear and I have to go, I’m at a greyhound station and it’ll take two whole days to get there.

and I say, 'safe travels and stay out of trouble.Straight road!'

And you laugh so loud it hurts my ear, Oh Natalie, come on, you know me! click.

I open the door to the windowless little room next to mine. The bed is neatly made. In the drawer there is a pair of plaid shorts and seven bars of soap. I take the sheets off the bed with the feeling of reverence that comes when you move something that was last touched by someone who is gone now, someone you will never see again.

RAPTURE

shes a silverhaired woman on the porch looking down at the old buffalo run that once was. shes standing on an Everest of years with a heart as light as a pebble.
this lightness it is spilling out of her like it was water over the brim of a drinking glass held to catch a waterfall and she speaks and it washes over me cold and clean and I cant say nothing else.

we’d all been inside all day for two days talking about how to help those whove fallen through the cracks to the wolves, bars, and police cars. we are taking a smoke break cause the cracks are wide and yonder dogs are hungry.
she thanks me and thanks the rest of us for this gift of a day. she smiles, lights a cigarette, says ‘good luck with that battle into medical school, we’ll look for you on the other side. Me, I’ll still be kicking. HAH!’ she shakes her head, and leans on the railing and sweeps her gaze like a hawk across the plains.

I had been standing there incredulous that she has seen all these winters, darker winters than Ive ever known naked with the wind howling through the snow. I was thinking, how in the fuck is it that she never laid down and died under the weight, even when she wanted to, even when the world pointed towards it and said ‘you must?’ but then it occurred to me that that a heavy burden long carried is not so easy to cast off. it starts to settle deep till it shapes the shoulders under it. it is even as we speak twisting through my guts like a beautiful but troublesome vine that will kill the tree if you cut it off. I put my hand to my stomach in wonderment.
but she has seen this before, knows how it is. and now above this buffalo run that’s given way to soybeans and other strange fruits, she she starts to laugh
and it catches and we roar with it, doubling over, until tears stream down our cheeks.

the itch

Everyone gotta lose it sometimes," you say, and laugh a sooty laugh. "We'll smudge your room tomorrow, get out those bad dreams thats haunting you. You sure its not anxiety from the sober life? You going sober, getting that anxiety? ..Everyone gets the damn itches sometimes."
you another light one, hitch up your fading plaid shorts, and ask me to check for lice in your cropped hair.
"Even me, I got them itches all right. I can feel them bugs, scratchin at night, man I've had some crazy nights. I tell you one night I had five of em tryin to get to the halfway house, that was back when I had my body, and shit, I tell you, two girls was clawin into the front and two was at the back door and I think the other was trying to sneak into the basement! and man oh man I had to crawl out of that window right quick fore they all caught my ass. The nurse came knockin at the door and said, GIRL, you in some trouble now! haha! So I jumped my ass out the window. I don't know what it is about them. I mean, I got girls, they tattoo my initials on their wrist or their tit, and I just say, shit you are cr-a-zy. One of em, Charyl, well she was at a party with our friends and she left and aint no one seen her after that cause she got stabbed 17 times and she died with that tattoo of my initials still on her wrist, right into the grave. We think it was one of our friends cause no one else saw her that night…I mean, some of them are so crazy. Some of em are classy, like Donna drivin the Lexus, which my daughter likes, you know, but Donna that girl is crazy. She is crazy, breakin all my plates and shit."
you shake your head sadly. the cigarettes, by now, are done, and I didnt find any nits.

bitch!

YOU FUCKING WHORE, FUCKING BITCH!
She accosts the shadow at the window. The shop downstairs is boarded up and there's not another person in sight all the way down the empty main street.
There is something simultaneously hopeful and cynical about her appearance—the way her jean skirt barely clears the curve of her ass, the platform shoes, the painted-on eyebrows. Tonight at the mirror, before all this started, she was becoming
something beautiful, something more than the sum of a closet full of clothes that make her look like a cheap
FUCKING SLUT, YOU FUCKING WHORE, COME THE FUCK DOWN HERE SO I CAN KICK YOUR
She demonstrates for the educational benefit of the recipient. Demands justice, now, from the street, as any thinking woman in her position would do; the judge sure as hell don't get it.
The shadow stares down guiltily but makes no plea nor contest to a late-night crime with a weak-willed man who, god love him, thought she was prettier.
Down on the street, below the painted eyebrows, the screamer's mascara is starting to run with a lifetime full of could'ves, would'ves, should'ves. She wraps her arms around her chest, making some effort to hide the plunging of her neckline. She rocks a little in the cooling night, beginning to fear she aint nothing but a spectacle shrinking smaller and smaller with each year that sags her breasts and wrinkles her eyes.

Some young compañeros roll by, honk twice at her ass, shake their heads sadly.
"Oh, these fucking women, why are they all such crazy whores?"