pioneertown.

Morning dove won’t stop leaking blank
whistle moans outside the window.
The desk is a derelict warehouse of ideas,
clinging limoncello rings, coffee cream
cum. Paw these fragments, map folds.
Find a place, make the route. Morning
dove flits a winged flume, starts a rival.

Barbed wire holds up the bronze cross
beside the low water crossing, buckled
slab that skips cars over the spittling
creek gush, washes futures away. Drunk
cowboy pisses Christ’s vinegar sponge
over the memorial, dares his silent friends
to tell him he’s going to hell. Dusk snarls
at light and nobody wins.

My uncle dies of Baptist stupor, nostalgic,
misshapen. Days caked in silt loam, the
promise oily bacon, coffee, crumbling
biscuits, days left tattered in feedsacks,
T-posts, residue of German immigrant
names heading west with the sun, the
harvest, Gothic remembrance times.