Late Afternoon at the Junction Rodeo
- Late Afternoon at the Junction Rodeo
At the fairgrounds,where the sun is not silentbut crackles white like spiton the tips of my yellow teeth,spit thirsty for bourbonwhile thistle pinks and fizzles whiteon the far periphery, eventhe bleachers are beat from waitingto catch the glimmer of a last spurthrown skyward to goad the day.
We're not piñatas, yet whywhile headed to the truckdo I feel so suddenly silly,hollow, so colorfully tattered,hung and stick-struck, swung,gaping at the air of settling dust?
The patience of the live oaksbordering the parking lotsickens me, their growth slowas a lesser-known old Westernand blighted acorns unfallen,fused by rot to the branch tips,by blue and yellow lichens,strung like cussed ornamentshere on the cusp of summer.
Though you are lean as winter wheat,your cotton dress is frayedlike the fins of an old catfish,my collar's crooked, and our children,full of sugar they believewill always fall from the sky,spun from steamy clouds of cotton, [End Page 74] have invented a game calledStomp the Shadow.It's my turn, and behind my back,they shuffle their little bootsupon a semblance of my head. [End Page 75]
JOHN POCH's most recent book, Fix Quiet, won the 2014 New Criterion Poetry Prize. His work recently appears in the Common, AGNI, Yale Review, and Poetry Magazine.*
