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Half Naked with Deer Skull and a Roll of Quarters
(for Sam Peckinpah)

S.A. Boyd


Up all night snorting Wellbutrin.
Now the mattress is wet and I’m holding a shotgun.
There’s a good chance the blood on my shirt is from the wart I cut off my knuckle.
I shower till the hot water runs out but my place still smells of cat shit.
There are a few things I know directly,
Others I have learned from watching movies, such as,
Putting my hands to a woman
Still warm from
Slow, motion machine gun wildness, or
The glow her face gets when slapped.
Reading Rudolph Wurlitzer in a booth by the bums.
Honey Browns are a buck-fifty
Nodding along to “November Rain”.
Plasma donors from next door sit too close to the television.
Their thin breath a faint reverb of wet lungs
While my clothes rattle in the dryer.
Their thirst for the bartender borders on occupation.
Buying a drink pays her rent.
Of course twenty bucks of blood
Buys a good drunk if you’re running
A pint low.
This girl with urine clouded eyes,
Cracking her jaw to mispronounce drafts.
Bent over, her spine is a tumble of coins tattooed on static thumbs.
I pretend to know their minds and it pleases me.
If she fights on the Russian front
Dying with their blood in her mouth
If she holds the shovel while
They pry gold from pine boxes
If she does the warden
To shorten my bit.
Her skull cuts to a white powder reflection on scratched ice.
The shock of straw bangs torn from sweat.
My last quarters spent tipping her for a map of Colorado
On which she’s written,
“Bring me the coke of Sam Peckinpah.”

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