alone with a black dog in tornado country
snapping at his broken ankles. days dark
as springstorms in sunny backtowns,
they walk as straight as railroad tracks
through the corpses of cottonfields, disrespectfully,
perfectly, quiet, like the mice they ate
for breakfast.
puddlefulls of heatcracks line the way to the horizon,
they sleep in woodshacks crawling with centipedes
and crackingly cold in the deep nights.
he celebrates his birthday coughing up tumbleweed
as the black dog chases imaginary dreams
of rats in rotting ghost towns.
he eats it four days later
shoots it with the last bullet in his rusted revolver
and skins it in the shade of the ash groves.
tough and brittle like his tired bones
the meat fills his stomach with a sadness
so raw he staggers like a disorderly drunk.
dollars breed seeds into the hardworn ground
and in the nowheres of states they buck
the trend with a thousand therapies
thick and thunderous
into the deep chasms of almost everywhere.
his tongue is whiskywet with wonder
lapping at his chin like a panting pup.
