Advice to a Northern Girl
If you go where I am heading, you will
have to walk the beatdirt backroads:
footway aligned parallel rustlink fencing;
looking through, the copper-dredged lake
we made devil to naked diving, some
years ago, extends past metal, boatline:
don’t stop to drink,
difficult reminisce!—
if you go where I am heading, you will
find in surplus refreshment: but,
friend, put your shit
in upper gear—
still position darkness, bedcold nights;
I know. Its one helluva way to the trail-
-head.
If you go, expect me there: though, lacking
momentum, I may not be on time.
On Gallup, New Mexico. On Homicide, Function
She did not leave the motor running, our truck
large and yellow in a stripmall tar-fume lot;
while, upon having to tongue off drunk
high-brow crowfeathered
Indians,
I resented my not jumping wagon
and should have bought a goddamn
cellphone on the east coast, for in
the brushspark flat tumble desert
we had no gas, food or smoke
and, listen, Western Union can
haul your ass from scavengers—
I looked to her mouthing vehement or
sharing lie constructed fiction, either
way, impatient,
with a broke spiritual thing. Man,
if I had as few teeth as that Indian
I would gum myself to sore knob
raw smooth nub, but thought better
of stabbing the guy, throat pour
Navajo bloodrum—
she gave him pennies and he later died,
unable to draw cork from bottle in having
so few teeth: curled god rotten corpse de-
-hydrated in a canyon parched with road
maps, old women hips & ex-wives.
Off in our yellow truck, money wired got
thicken fry bread tummy & gasoline,
reservation tobacco cheap bought carton.
I was in love with, tho scarce recommend,
the empty city sky jagged crag ridges and
the lively filth of soul & warrior drunk decay.
Hear nothing rattle from highway automobile,
scrape knucklebone against glass and think
what dark, moist shit life is and still in love.
|
Pedro Trevino-Ramirez
