snap the trigger four times.
The sun’s now on the shoulder
of an Indian woman walking into
distance filled with dirt trees.
I go to the pay phone again
outside El Triumpho Tamales,
& Ray Charles cries from a car
speeding past.
Dedications & Other Darkhorses
Returning the Borrowed Road
The hard white land
calls you back across
iron months to Missoula,
overtaken in Colorado’s slow mountains
among gray cloud horses.
Lines, muscles, the heart’s
great naked timbers, swing
music. You said, Get away
from the poem. You’re too close.
Now, I let each stone
seek its new mouth.
In Boulder, your first word
homage, a lifetime of birds
gone wild with brightness,
like bundled hayfields.
That day when you entered
the room, we mistook you
for a man who works
a mile down in the ground.
—for Richard Hugo
Chair Gallows
Beating wind with a stick.
Riding herd on the human spirit.
It’s how a man slips his head into a noose
& watches the easy weight of gods pull down
on his legs. I hope this is just another lie,
just another typo in a newspaper headline.
But I know war criminals
live longer than men lost between railroad tracks
& crossroad blues, with twelve strings
two days out of hock.
I’ve seen in women’s eyes
men who swallow themselves in mirrors.
—memory of Phil Ochs
Allegorical Seduction
I am piled up so high
in your walk, I
slide down a chute of years.
Touch me, mountains
rise, & the pleasure
tears us into a song.
Quicksilver skies, these birds
over The Four Corners
down through Gallup & Window Rock
catch fire in clouds.
No god tells them
different. No hand
disclaims our closing
distance, as doors open
under the sea.
—for Linda G.
Under House Arrest
I won’t crawl into
your cathedral of ashes
& gopherwood to buy an hour
digging my grave. Nightsticks
have bashed every drumhead,
but in the Anlo of my bones
I’ll fight till the grave-
digger throws dirt in my face.
Listen, big man around town,
hear my silence. Tom-toms
rattle across indigo hills,
& my tongue’s heavy as a gold piece.
One grunt of wisdom
remains. But Yemanja
knows how to heal
this song, dancing naked
in my brain. I gaze all night
at the moon through a crack
in the wall, till nothing
rises & sinks back on its haunches
into damp secret earth.
—for Kofi Awoonor
Translating Footsteps
She says Go fuck yourself
when I say Good-bye & good luck
with potted plants
under a granite moon.
A hand reaches from behind
to slash my throat.
Some things refuse translation:
the way I place my hands under
red silk to hear
a thin-skinned drum;
language of growing grass;
tombed treaties forgotten like lamps
left to burn out in a ghost
