--- M I C H A E L   M A G E E

then the Norse canibales nursed theirs
like nosehairs caught in crosshairs
or tribes in crossfire
everyone pretended to be lost
generating their tails
ain't nobody livin'
in here but us amphibians

felt felt somewhere and not
a swath to feel
felt the hard frictionless pool
table, got a feel for the pool
the temperature skinny dipped 
the polar bear club crashed the bar
ordered tattoos for their tits and shrunken nuts

squirreled away in May
splinter for the winter
enter the vendor
in a faith healing contest
and drought management course
and free current lottery
and free rent draft in your calendar

because of the old windows
like old men whistling
dixie from a cracked skull bone
like Hamlet on a ham
radio blowing through
a box of oreos, peering at the flora
in this shopworn story-o

you and I are confederate
one and two are confederate
rubber and glue are confederate
needle and thread are confederate
the quick and the dead are confederate
two and one are confederate
the rope and the gun are confederate

they sold us that conjunction
gave us blinding conjunctivitis
and then didn't invite us
treated us like detritus
like you treat your garden
with pesticides, papaya or papyrus

north to south
mountain to mouth
played high low in the chasm
they interpreted it as a sign
like a welcome mat
for the monkey on the vine, swinging
low over the signifying chasm
  
                     *
 
like mallards, like melba
toast we are
dying on the bank
like a bank shot
you can't bank on
like a tanker's tank
of gas    .    thank you

when we finally struck
oil it was just
enough to cover us
like James Dean in Giant
we immediately wrote a minstrel
show on the bald heads
of our betters

visions of uber plumes
danced in our fed-exed heads
fried in the barrel scrapes
w/ the leftover barcodes
the estuary in the east
was taken by Christ freaks
who were taken with James Dean, of East of Eden

he'd welshed on a bet, gyped
a JAP princess who nigger-lipped some
pop, just like a WOP
they couldn't stop talking stop
talking stop talking, they couldn't
stop talking like they swallowed a WASP
I guess they'll die

I know an old lady
who accentuated her possessives
and fucked her ethnographer
in all of us
I know an old man
he laced eggs with the rotten heart
of all of us