The Bread We Eat in Dreams

Did I ever tell you I used to be a cowboy?

It’s true.

Had a horse name of Drunk Bob

a six shooter

called Witty Rejoinder.

And I tell you what,

Me and Bob and Witty

we rode the fucking range.

This thing here is two poems and one’s about proper shit

mythic, I guess, just the way you like it and the other one

isn’t much to look at, mostly about what a horse smells like

when he’s been slurping up Jack and ice from the trough.

The first poem goes like this:

A few little-known facts about cowboys:

Most of us are girls.

Obsolescence does not trouble us.

We have a dental plan.

What I can tell you is cows smell like office work and

the moon looks like Friday night and the paycheck just cashed

rolling down to earth like all the coins

I ever earned.

Drunk Bob he used to say to me:

son, carrying you’s no hurt—

it’s your shadow weighs me down.

That, and your damned singing.

And Witty she’d chuckle

like the good old girl she was,

with a cheeky spin of her barrel

she’d whistle:

boy, just gimme a chance

I’ll knock your whole world down.

Me and Bob and Witty,

we rode town to town and sometimes we had cattle

and sometimes we didn’t and that’s just how it lies.

Full-time cowboy employment is a lot like being a poet.

It’s a lot of time spent on your lonesome in the dark

and most folks don’t rightly know

what it is you do

but they’re sure as shot they could manage it

just about as well as you.

Some number of sweethearts come standard with the gig,

though never too much dough.

They dig the clothes, but they can’t shoot for shit,

and they damn sure don’t want to hear your poems.

That’s all right.

I got a heart like a half bottle

of no-label whiskey.

Nothing to brag on,

but enough for you, and all your friends, too.

I quit the life

for the East Coast and a novel I never could finish.

A book’s like a cattle drive—you pound back and forth over the same

ugly patch of country until you can taste your life seeping out

like tin leeching into the beans

but it’s never really over.

Drunk Bob said:

kid, you were the worst ride I had

since Pluto said Bob, we oughta get ourselves a girl.

And Witty whispers: six, baby, count them up and just like that

we’re in the other poem, which is how we roll

on the glory-humping, dust-gulping, ever-loving range.

Some days you can’t even get a man to spit in your beer

and some you crack open your silver gun

and there’s seeds there like blood already freezing

ready to stand tall at high midnight

ready to fire so fucking loyal, so sweet,

like every girl who ever said no

turning around at once and opening their arms.

And your honor’s out on the table, all cards hid.

And by your honor I mean my honor,

and by my honor I mean everything in me, always, forever,

everything in a body that knows

what to do with six ruby bullets

and a horse the color of two in the morning.

That knows when the West tastes like death and an old paperback

you saddle your shit and ride East,

when you’re done with it all you don’t put down roots

and Drunk Bob says: come on, son, you’ve got that book to write

and I know a desk in the dark with your name on it.

And Witty old girl she sighs: you know what you have to do.

Seeds fire and bullets grow and I’m the only one who’s ever loved you.

That horse can go hang.

And I say: maybe I’ll get an MFA

and be King of the Underworld

in some sleepy Massachusetts town.

And all the while my honor’s tossed into the pot

and by my honor I mean your honor

or else what’s this all about? Drunk Bob

never did know where this thing was going

but I guess the meat of it is how Bob is strong and I am strong

and Witty is a barrel of futures, and we are all of us

unstopping, unending, unbeginning:

we keep moving. You gotta keep moving.

Six red bullets will show the way down.

We all have to bring the cows in.

I am here to tell you

we are all of us just as mighty as planets—and you too,

we’ll let you in, we’ve got stalwart to spare—

but you might have to sleep on the floor.

Me and Bob and Witty just

clop on and the gun don’t soften

and the horse don’t bother me with questions,

all of us just heading toward the red rhyme of the sunset

and the door at the bottom of the verse.

The secret of being a cowboy is

never sticking around too long and honor

sometimes looks like a rack of bones

still standing straight up at the end of both poems.