Wednesday, August 27, 2014

The dander of dead things

 photo Comala1.jpg

Comala

The sons arrive midday as they always do, parched with
dust and the dander of dead things. They have come to
find the fathers they were born to lose, again and again.

Cactus steams under sunbraziers tuned to the key of dying,
always dying. Never enough rain or respite, unable to stand
within the spiny shade they so prickly cast out before them.

Are you in the adobe walls with women who waited too long
for you to show up, folded up into the hard mud built by lies
and all the hands it took to seal up whatever truth remains?

Desert things do what the desert deigns they do if they want
to be rewarded with the dark down terror that awaits them
when the sun slips from the edge of the hisser’s dry rattles.

 photo Comala2.jpg

So they pass by, one by one, their shoes fitting perfectly
into prints that snake out before them disappearing through
bawdy saloon doors that swing on hinges wrung with rust.

A familiar voice and this son turns toward it instinctively,
hovering as it does with the scent of meatballs and tequila
saddled together in a worn pair of bad cowboy boots.

It is filled with excuses, reason, stories more laborious than
an ear has reason to torment itself with, the missed dates,
promises scattered like dropped lizard tails in writhing deceit.

But this is the way a childhood is built, one missed memory
at a time, one possibility thrown to the stars to be hung on
moonskins that disappear with the passing night that takes them.

Joseph Gallo
May 29, 2014

 photo Comala3.jpg

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home