Celebration, and: Carmen, and: Golden Section

Celebration

The farm kids run circles in the yard, playing tag, the girls’ summer ribbons streaming behind them. I hold on tight

to the little girl on my knee and watch them run and tumble on the fresh-mowed grass. Mourners

mill around, their lips shining with goat meat from the smoker (out past the kids, sending mesquite clouds

over the farmhouse), and I see Ramona in her, this girl, eyes glassy with sleep in the late Texas sun. The dead, I tell her,

go on before us. I give her to Mattias and pick at my food. Ramona was here not two weeks ago buying

milk that could’ve been Phoebe’s. The quartered goat fit in the smoker with room to spare, four pieces jigsawed

together flat, the fire burned down low, mesquite chips and a pan of boiling water. The cancer took Ramona quick, and Mattias

called to say she wanted a celebration here, at the farm, where she always felt low to the ground. And here I’ve prepared it—

the blood’s still caked under my nails. Phoebe dried up last week, the mastitis at last so bad we couldn’t milk her. Not two weeks ago

I milked her into a steel bucket, squeezing each teat firm from pointer to pinky smooth as a spreading ripple.

This morning I cut the big udder from her skinless carcass. It surprised me to open her up and find her organs steaming

blue, hanging like papayas from her spine. Surprised me how heavy her familiar body sagged as we pulleyed it from the dust with ropes

and hung it head down from the beams of the barn. How easy to make a slit between the bones in her back legs to hold the gambrel.

How quick her cut neck gave its bright life to the ground, frothing as it ran free and cooled in the trench. How simple

to lead her trusting from the pen, to give her a bowl of feed, to hold the gun to her head and squeeze a finger.

Carmen

after Catullus

Late snow today, and flower bulbs are already sending their fat shoots up through wet mulch along the sidewalk. Sparrows flit through the bushes, taunting me with their song of spring. I imagine how one would fit so perfectly in the palm of my hand, how warm it would be. I’m tempted to believe the lies these birds sing, but I know my girl is hearing the same song down south and there it carries every sign of spring. I think of your girl’s sparrow, Catullus, and you take the moment to remind me that my verses should be even less pious than I am. Which I’ll take as I should, and cut right to the part of this song you’ll like. My Carmen, see, makes your Clodia seem blowsy, a diluted wine, a dull receptacle for perfumed, sheet-wrapped goatherds. This, my friend, is the 180-proof world, land of the four-hour erection, home to newfangled words like pedophilia, gloryhole. Clodia’s old hat here, and your weakness for little boys hasn’t aged well. So I called Carmen down south to promise her three hundred thousand kisses and more (which, you’ll agree, doesn’t make me a softy), and she scoffed that if I’d set my sights on greatness, I might consider your record of screwing nine times straight through an afternoon. I said I’d do well to make three, as she knew, and she laughed, extolling the virtues of the young. Lord, is this just reward for my faithfulness? I no longer even pray for an end to this game, O, only that these claws be removed from me. As for this college kid, whoever he may be, I’ll not pedicare or irrumare the fool just yet, content for now to keep my pants on— though open (as ever) to expert advice. I know she’ll have it both ways as long as she can, so I hope she’s...