THE PORNOGRAPHIC ASPENS
The pornographic aspens around
Gardnerville are slowly falling
into the hands of historians.
Carved a century ago,
they're dying from predictable
and natural causes. No puritans
have cared to fell or burn them. Women
seem to find it vaguely flattering
that shepherds, out all summer long
with herds, could not resist the
yearning
to humanize the nearby trees
with images of fellatio
and other crude but clear-cut acts.
Desire left scars, and their quivering
text
goes on, a legendary lust
whose scattered spoor, like Bigfoot's,
beckons
visitors with their own recognitions.
Illiterate, ill-trained, the shepherds
survive
because their clumsy, patient love
is endless, and transcends the skin
it mutilates when left alone.
THE HALCYON DAYS OF THE MOBILE
HOME
In the halcyon days of the mobile home,
nobody thought it was trashy to own one;
quintessentially American--
the dream of a roadworthy domicile,
riding off into the sunset armed
with a porta-potty of your own
was freedom of a special kind
that not every nation affords its citizens.
Modestly retrospective, I'd destigmatize
the poverty that led these nomads to overstay
welcomes in trailers parks, to sink roto-roots
in sterile fields or in cracking cement.
I'd ask you to come with me to explore
the place I'd invent by forgiving the poor
and watching them all on the highways again
in that unjudging stream, where no one stands firm,
and where, if people settle, they do so along
the same shoulder as others, where no one looks down.
ALL THE BAD PEOPLE
Drunk in Tahoe four days in a row-
shopping in high heels, a white fishnet
chemise and jeans with a rip on each thigh,
she blinks past her makeup, amazed to be
in love and alone. The haggard platinum
crone on stilts isn't her, she is pretty
sure. Her phone rings--it's only a girlfriend
wanting to know where her weekend has gone.
Her basket is full of things that will sit
untouched in her fridge for weeks till he comes
around, and sees that what he has wanted
all along was what she has been
holding back, like tears, or a family
secret: her innocence. Never mind
the press-on nails, the stripper's chignon,
the bedroom habits, the powdery stains
on the mirror-she just needs someone to love her
for all the bad people she hasn't become.
