Picking gnats off my breasts Cleaning Popsicle drips from your lips The smell of burning charcoal filling The fresh mountain air, The desert creosote, Embracing our lungs, The Midwestern nothingness Laughing. Thriving in pale echoes left by sunsets We couldn’t hope to remember, Polaroid memorials litter my dash, Like the hallways of Christian families living in the realm of their God and his good graces, But I exist only within the land of those Greedy yellow lines, and they are criminals That control the trade of souls Unforgiving of homes, It isn’t where your mail comes, Or where your love is… It’s where your hat hangs… Next to the noose on the hall tree. It’s this quest for feral freedom, That the road knows, but never tells. And in that open, red dirt canyon land, I am not a wife, not a concubine, not a sinner. I conspire with Texaco maps over purple horizons, And this is not an ode to the open stretches, It is not a simple joy to love or indulge in, Concrete paths cannot nurture, But freedom comes with sacrifice, and my roots won't rot Confessing in boxes of listening men You’re not forgiven there either, You’re fucked twice and blinded, Heaven is in the landscape, In Cajun accents and Rocky Mountains, The rest is just stained glass perception Like whores with perfect smiles. Here hope is not a dead space with Tire swings and maroon toilets.
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