Little Killers of the Working Class

Girls running on hormonal excess, fresh out of wisdom, we lived in
the land of men, mean boys and roughnecks, midnight parties on
oil lease land with washtubs of beer in caliche pits above beds of
sylvite and potash. We had to be as tough as them or they would
just take what we wouldn't give. On weekends we drove to the
Pecos, a watery mud prison in the middle of nothing, the antioasis,
a wet hole in the desert's belly.

The first time I sank in it up to my thighs, but that's what we did.
One hundred miles of nowhere in any direction. Our choices were
slim. The place was solemn, buzzards circled in formation
overhead. If you listened long enough there was scrabbled beauty
in the wind.

At night the moon swam on the water. We watched coyotes scuttle
in the brush, and the boys all had rifles in their trucks‐‐little killers of the working class.

We drove sixty miles back to our living rooms‐‐Ed Sullivan, Mama's
Goulash served on Melmac, and air filled with the smell of Daddy's pipe.

Languishing Away in the Big Fried Empty

Sneezing ocotillo dust
as it whispers in on a west wind
smelling of lavender and creosote
and tasting like spit.

Eyes close para minuto,
I pretend to smell rain.
Sweet ozone lingers for a second
but only in a memory.

Eight months since the last boomer.
No use bartering with the devil
for things that can never be.

A crush of whisky tinted mesas
line the end of the world,
and I’m so very tired.

I sing to stay awake
to keep from thinking.
Thinking brings thoughts,
thoughts bring ideas,
ideas mean notes,
notes mean pulling over.

I crave something cold,
or a mulberry, a succulent something.

In the vastness of this empty,
where sky swallows land,
my only burdens are miles and hours.

I want to stop and stretch,
stand in the sunflowers,
let the rattlers taste my boots.

I’ve lived among living things too long,
long enough to get weary,
long enough to crave this dry Texas dirt,
this dead dead bottom of a dried up sea.