Four Roses bottles halo heads,
and unstruck matches teeter on fingers
creased with soot.
Cigarettes stick to cracked lips.
Dust dunes about shoes,
roll into cuffs and gather in the corners.
Eyelids twitch, noses whistle.
Tufts of down flutter in beards.
with two fingers, she lifts the box,
tells me to stop eating in bed again,
and blows me a kiss
Sylvester Graham never knew.
At fledgling dawn
we lie back to back
and try to forget.
Sunday mornings, Howard, white stubble lit up
under a faded ball cap, scolds children,
moves traffic about with his walking stick.
Mass begins and the street grows quiet.
He eases into the porch swing,
feeds squirrels HiHo Crackers
and tells them where to go.
Around 3 a.m., stars twinkle
in the last of the heat
rising off the pavements.
Even big dogs have gone to sleep.
The city lifts a little,
expands without weight of people
and machines and all that worry.
You can even hear it breathe.
In the smells of latex, rusted iron rods
and cool basement stone,
he hums Mozart,
sands the breasts of Venus.
Her fingers work clothespins,
swipe wrinkles from sheets,
drop the smell of sun and wind
into the basket next to the bed.
Headstones in the cemetery at Ft. Buford, Montana:
Son of Owlheadress, beat to death, July 22, 1868
Owlheaddress, dead of drink, Aug. 20, 1868
At Sally’s, Son of Owlheaddress,
swayed before Cap’t Johnson
who turned him out into the night.
Egged on by moonlight
and stars like stripper’s veils,
he went back and got beat to death.
At the bar, between two whores,
Owlheaddress turned to his drink.
Cap’t Johnson, back at the post,
polished his boots.
Full moon, one moon later,
Owlheaddress sprawled over his son’s grave,
eyes wide, galactic debris
tinkling in his heart.
We grieved as our cigars grew short.
Tree frogs screamed in the silver maple;
the dog next door awoke in a frenzy of growl;
a congress of cats behind the fence wailed.
The whole neighborhood wanted
just ten more minutes with Castro
A hot place, four dried pines from ascension,
and willing to spread, like smoke,
heavenward.
People shimmer in mirages—
sticks quaking in sun
coming off all that trailer park chrome.
And dust, lots of dust,
chokes throats, chafes eyes,
makes noses bleed.
But it’s good here, and quiet.
Especially at night. The cool settles,
even those pines seem alive.