When Mountains’ Heads Roll
In the land of false prophets, I tell my kin
of our ancestors, twelve feet tall
and broad as rivers, faces upturned
to good sun and rain.
We were somebody, once.
Master’s house and Master’s tools but
I don’t know what’s been said of Molotov’s.
Our land runs black and water orange,
and we are told the polls are open for change,
but neither head speaks a tongue we know.
My people used to use their hands but
my fist upraised means anarchy.
In the land of hollow promises, I see
the wires and hear the cues,
our prearranged deaths
coming down the pipe-line.
The Johnson Girl
they say she cut all her hair off they say she don’t walk
like she used to they say they don’t care one way or the other
but they’d just like to know
cross town, they don’t say much except she’s come home for christmas eve and christmas and will be gone before new year’s
and her hair is so short you can see her scalp
she is greater and smaller,
stooped expanded
too small for her clothes
too large for her father’s house
cross town again they say she was
such a sweet girl, meaning,
she had been quiet and never made trouble,
now she’s gone and ruined notions of womanhood and decency
she could have made it over here you know, they claim
in offended and generous mutterings, if she hadntve run off
she was almost halfway civilized
all things considered
the sun must not set on montana because her face has gone dark, burned deep in the dermis and epidermis and sunspots and wrinkles, someone sees her buying marlboros at the dried up gas station and says
A HA
that must be it
because it’s easier than realizing she’s been gone eight years and a lot of life
turns under your feet that long out
she goes down on the river
where boys drink long from lukewarm cans
and shoots one of them who she knew
before and that’s the end of that
