[My first crush was Wild Bill Hickok, not the actual guy but the guy who portrayed him], and: [His body was barely cold when the suitors swooped in on the young widow, the ground], and: [I can't see her clearly. Can you see your mother clearly? I was concocted], and: [I can't say I loved punk when punk was contagious, CBGB nearly every night], and: [What do you think Elvis's best song was, he asks, for me, he says, it's that Hunk], and: [Then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can, he says], and: [Once, I took a Greyhound north across an icy bridge, it seemed it took], and: [Takes time to get to minimalism, years lived through, eau de]

My first crush was Wild Bill Hickok, not the actual guy but the guy who portrayed him

My first crush was Wild Bill Hickok, not the actual guy but the guy who portrayed himon TV, Guy Madison, who died of emphysema, whose grandson was killed in action in Iraq.What did cowboys do all day I wondered. Aside from gunfighting. Figuring out whetherthey'd be good or bad, which determined the color of the hat. My hat, how did my motherafford it, bought at West's Variety, powder blue. My gun, a toy. I was wise enough at agethree to own my projections. I would become what I loved. My mother didn't hover as Idecided what I'd do with what I was. Her best friend made a particle-board lid for the cribso she could go out on the cement slab and drink highballs, unimpeded by kids, who allturned out fine and loved her madly, though half of them died young in motorcycle wrecks.My mother didn't care if I rescued or killed or swung from a noose until I was dead. Thatwas my domain. Her domain was TV dinners and James Joyce. Mikel's first crush was the bodyof a young hung TV cowboy who swung from the noose in a spiral pattern. Mikel called homehis projections and likewise died young and hung. I decided my kind of cowboy would readtall tales from a tall book called Tall Tales about tornadoes and card games and white whales.

His body was barely cold when the suitors swooped in on the young widow, the ground

His body was barely cold when the suitors swooped in on the young widow, the groundwas still fresh over the grave, it was spring, the president had been shot a few months earlier,nests mocked the gravedigger's work, the suitors swooped in from all directions like carrionbirds, the first an oval-headed man from across the road with dirty phone calls the nightafter the funeral, then one cornered her in the garage by the bag of her husband's clothes,and two brothers peeked in the windows and tapped on them like woodpeckers, and the schoolring salesman, and the old man who looked like Colonel Sanders, and Al, her friend's husbandfrom Wabash, Indiana, while his wife was strapped down getting shock treatments, and the smallman with a big voice who pawed in the night at the screen door like a bear roaring her name,just a few months earlier she'd watched the president's funeral on television, there was BlackJack, riderless horse, boots set backward in the stirrups, and the president's widow, walking straightspinedunder a black veil, and now the robins hopped as they always had, their songslike a tangle of string in the air, and how did she fend them off, the suitors, and go to college,and read Ulysses, and write papers on that manual typewriter, and feed us, my sister and me?

I can't see her clearly. Can you see your mother clearly? I was concocted

I can't see her clearly. Can you see your mother clearly? I was concoctedin the kettle of her body. Swam like a swan in a pool of...