To This Country

of swollen rivers & lives dismissed like branded dogs, I’ve come to drink
your tears, to intrude on your perfect fog.  There’s

a butcher, red vest open to the sun, knife in one hand, basket of bull’s
balls in the other.  I order mine with mustard & 

there’s Audrey with her yellow teeth & skin like putty who offers to wipe
my slate clean & pours a cup of Darjeeling & whispers your name

as if it could bring you back whole: Josie . . . shush . . . Josie . . . &
there’s a gunner in green fatigues nursing a baby &

a naked dancer spread-eagled on the kitchen table pulsing open & close
the lips of her vagina & Henry the florist holding

a wreath of carnations & iris & lilies & a banner which reads: Smoke
One For Her Sake . . .

In this country there are men dusting off their eyes for one last look &
drinking urine & cursing the dark &

runners who turn downhill to avoid rain & a conductor tempting fate &
stirring a restless pot of gunpowder & beans &

masked men who open their faces at midnight & women in the upstairs
rooms who fiddle & sing & rub glass in their wounds.