women – orphan poems

126. A Living Wind

For three weeks wind blew

trailers off their trucks

and arms off windmills

spun too fast for harvest mechanics.

For three weeks a town

drew lots for madness,

crossing fingers behind backs

individually, holding a bland face

to calm the rattling windows

of their souls.

Until snow fell,

only wine was consumed

in low light, no whiskey.

Until snow fell,

banishing wind,

half the breath of town

was saved for prayer.

Let it be not my son,

my sister to answer

wind’s harassment

with a bullet

this time.

And this time

everyone drew

blank cards,

drew curtains closed

and kept the lid on the fragile

trailer of a town. No one wonders

why women on prairies seventy

years ago heard voices, saw

visions, shattered

sanity, they wonder

why everyone didn’t.

125. Hitching a ride

She’s swung in backwash,

turbulent storms of exhausting

broadcasts, night preachers

from Houston and radios of atmosphere

dedicated on the plucked lawns of childhood,

what is right in a movie and

wrong for the flesh that heart

pushes her blood toward all day.

Because men own guns

they own women

and earth like

their own beards

Because women own guns

they own men

and grass like

their own eyelashes …

So many fences, tying ideas to earth.

She stays on the wrong side

of the highway, diesel trucks honking

a leer at her skinny brown legs.

She just walks, looking

for something not tied to her.

All she can use is about

one square yard

at a time.

117. In A Perfect World

When old women stop taking

care of children and pets and

grown boys and houses they may

notice the age of their hands and

wonder why they look like the hands

of grandmothers when their minds

are still young and harbor dreams.

When old women have no one

to feed except themselves,

the mirror may become a study

of how so many memories could fit

into such a compact body, and shrinking.

When old women rest they may find

beauty in the strange rhythms

of a lifetime, though they may have

composed a very different symphony

in a perfect world.

107. my aunts

.

my aunts look like my

mother as they age, lovely

eyes and smiles that blow

all the fuses. their blood

pulses ancestral coal and tin, skin

slick with a ranch’s fresh

stench of branding: in this case

.

colts and

madness and

– oddly –

social justice a rich seam, shot through

the bedrock of calving and misogyny.

.

rage and shame, too, evenly laid,

thin but

persistent lodes snaking

through each sister.

.

how alive two are yet, how

men stunted them all,

the girls.

now they fade.

they stare out across dry lawns,

all the colts broken

.

and we cousins sigh,

softly and half lost like the ranch

left fallow for our

winter.

17. my mother – 2

my mother, worn

down by love’s curious

longings and

this world’s repetitious

fears when

one teetering calf,

slick new, clover crushed beneath,

should neutralize that.

my mother, pared down,

probing mind, even,

fading in, out.

autumn sorrow

crisp and dry, scrapes

across my heart.

16. two minds

i am two lovely

minds one cussing wild, one

smooth stone.

hating with one hand

loving with the other – why

allow serenity to sheath

assassin’s blades?

be this,

be that, smile

little lady

be mine …

bull

shit.

i am cutlass and monk.

oh sure, I don’t

always approve of

you, either.

own your own.

these are mine.