errol miller
IN TEXAS
Power in the blood
you go the wrong way
and you are still there in mythology
drinking up your visit you are a hired hand
romping through bitchy towns and golden legends
here you are a native stacking racks of bones
dreaming of big money and literary magazines
sometimes the movies should go to Amarillo
record the casual thrust of women there
as they drop off into twilight's sweet memory-song
like natural flowers the skylines of wealthy merchants
seem to horrify the desert with their sting
from these intellectual needs they squeeze existence
dissecting wild jack-rabbits to study membranes
never has it been funny to be a stranger
certainly it is hell to die outside a cafe
as aloof sisters pray and carve an ivory headstone
in good times a feeble press discovering
people filling gardens with shiny motorcars
a succession of fine lives on a hot afternoon
of pompous gossip, duds and trinkets
an old place with paper billboards
scrub oak and a few Union dead
the wind there of course free
and they say on a long dark night
out on the prairie
you can hear
buffalo hunters popping Lone Star beer
sifting their laughter over the rainbow
to a private God they bought
for weekend prayer.
