Prairie Daughter (1982), and: Prairie Daughter (1962), and: Prairie Daughter (1936), and: Prairie Daughter (1877), and: My Body’s a Billboard, and: Bathtub

Prairie Daughter (1982)

We buried Papa in that high place and thenhe came to the door and waited to be let in

like a mangy dog the neighbors denied.The smalls said they could hear him climb

and then descend the porch stairs, but they hadfeverish ears. If he stood and looked across

the tar to the fields, did he see history creepinginto the dust? Mama couldn’t get up

out of bed. She said something was hunting her down,grief with yellowed canines and a bag of heavy rocks.

We buried her beside him, beloved wife and mother,though we couldn’t say he ever held her to be beloved,

something that tender and everlasting. Did we hear himsay any more to her, anything more sweet than Good night?

Prairie Daughter (1962)

Papa drags the plow west to the edge and backeast to the edge, dredges up rocks. Then he drives a rack

and we bend down to lift rocks from dirt. Don’t call itdirt, Papa says. Worms, beetles, ants scurry

from their revelation. At first we sing, the smalls and I,My Name Is Jon Johnson and There’s a Hole in My Bucket

but we grow as silent as the rocks we lift, and our necksstiffen and the backs of our knees sweat and crease

with soil, and our hands throb but there is no endto the rocks that have come up with winter’s freeze

so I begin to curse winter silently for its stubbornrevival and I time my curses with the rocks landing

one on another, harsh consonants of permanence, and soit goes all afternoon. Even at dinner we are silent, as if

our mouths had been filled with pebbles. Mama saidthe evening seemed cooler. Indeed, Papa spoke into the room.

Prairie Daughter (1936)

We ate tumbleweed in brine after the government menshot the cow. Dust pushed the fences under.

Whole days went by with no light. We learned to sitwith our eyes closed, to breathe through sponges, when

we had them, otherwise pillowcases folded and wet.I could trace dreams in the dust: daisies or apples

or sidecars. Not for girls Mama said. Anyway, a sidecarwouldn’t be fast enough. Snakes twisted belly up

on the barbed wire. I used to stand by the front doorand count how many steps to any grove of trees,

any hill, any river you could escape to. Now I’d settlefor calm. I want to tear those dust-black sheets down.

Prairie Daughter (1877)

Mama and the smalls mixed up bowls of branand molasses to attract the grasshoppers,

and arsenic to kill them, all of the molasseswe’d said would make February tolerable.

Whole tribes of grasshoppers settledon Papa’s one saddle, ate the tooled surface

right down to the pressed wool. Imagineall those tiny mandibles sawing and sawing

at what was once cow. And the cows twitchyin the field, laden with the tribes and their

bellies full of what we’ll long for come winter.There’s no escaping the plague and no

knowing the sin that brought it. Papa saidthe priest led a parade down Atlantic Avenue

in his white cassock, someone carrying the cross,praying that the grasshoppers be delivered.

My Body’s a Billboard

When I was ten it was my heightand when I was eleven it was my pussy,in the pool, boys circling me, hands getting a rubof what was, to me then, nothing much,and when I was twelve it was my breasts,nipples like lunar blossoms, and when I wassixteen it was my pussy—again—full-out grownand ripe and when I was twenty it was my tongue,and when I was thirty it was my breasts heavywith milk, and when I was forty it was my wholemouth and the way it attached to my brain...