poem: Mary Karr dreaming on Chuck

long-limbed branded rifleman,
avatar of the dreaming west,
Jason in his rounds of the steepled
frogbent gloom, life
mirrored in the groves
of door-to-door misery
plumping the pillows
of the dried scrolls
at the bottom of your belly,
asking for naught but
entry into this life,
that life, any other
but the drumblooming
frenzy that freezes your belly
taut, lightning bugs
starlighting your fate
inside the screened-in porch
of your wary mind,
casting a weary eye down alley,
across lawnspace,
up and down the doxy gams
of your sister's bounty:
live in that shadow long
enough & the Specific
rolls its head into your
drowsy tentacled afternoons,
the call is inventory-blessed,
catching fire in the swamplands,
the delta force of a belated
gaggle of angels calling
you out, calling you forth,
calling you past the rounding
place of your withered home,
prairie dog hermitage
coyote nunnery
cottonmouth nest in the synapses
of a spoiled food fate:
Chuck was ever nothing more than
the call to your own desertion,
the world tumbling
through your bones,
your daddy momma sister
in the waters
of memory's collapsible gate.