Sunday, July 10, 2011

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.

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