Friends, country gentlemen
    women of the red cloak

    It is not the moon that draws the liquid silver
    Of my voice across the black starry field

    It is the last mind
    thumping loudly like
    the falling snowflakes
    across the space of fallowed tillage

    The sonic dust of cattle sand
    driving along the fence own s
    spotted, hiding among the map of legend

    Rarity in menagerie
    you would only listen
    If my name was Jack
    growling wireless in the A.M.
    500,000 megahertz praises
    taking Elvis four hours from Tijuana
    to reach the red eye of Jupiter

    You never knowing that
    beyond S.E.T.I.'s dishes
    meandering wide hipped Norma jeaned
    my howling yodeled deer out of headlights
    pocket mice from fields of wild rye
    hushed wild asses into the rocky silence of Sonoran nights

    My ladies of the red cloak
    it is not the sound of outer
    space that will infect you

    It is the fear of your wolf innards
    the silence of seed syllables caught
    in the throat by your own swollen tongue

    Listen, it is I, Wolf in snowshoes
    weeping green starry spruce
    and on this winter, Sirius, in relation,
    is not far from Orion's heels--
    lupine, the light in empty lea

    This is what will consume the skin
    running blue along the eyes and mouth
    rot the hands falling
    on the black keys of pianos

    You executioners the legends
    of poisoned traps
    sharpshooters one and all
    name this one for me

Copyright © Henry Oso Quintero, 2001.  All Rights Reserved.