THE HOG FARMER’S DAUGHTER IS DANCING

ON THE LAST NIGHT OF THE COUNTY FAIR

  

i.

 

And if she follows me, fine.

We’ll meet behind the corncob pile.

 

Tell her

where the white lies are.

 

 

ii.

 

Knee-high,

The Fourth of July.

 

 

iii.

 

Red-handed old man,

you have brushed my teeth again.

 

And my treetops have caught your moon.

 

You were the jocular one,

lowest star in the mimosa.

 

God Bless you

 

 

iv.

 

& keep you

my hopeful

heap of junk:

 

ribbons, bows,

tiny dismay.

Oh Boy,

 

it drags me

a long, long way.  

 

 

v.

 

Sugar tooth,

crude loot,

 

legumes, beans

in their black suits,

 

the rattle ripe,

the wind chime,

 

the wee shine.

 

 

vi.

 

It really doesn’t seem fair:

 

the whipped filly, her matted hair,

the knot-tender’s bad behavior.

 

What have you done,

he says to the horse.

 

 

vii.

 

The heat, it has trotted out

to the show of shows. No doubt,

 

it is standing at the bully pulpit,

dead ass dragged to the microphone.

 

And so the story goes

 

 

viii.

 

mending shoes,

the crawl of wax,

 

it mixes with our

disappointment, his

 

& mine, a shirt

lost in the bumper cars.

 

 

ix.

 

Happiness, wives, children—

 

take this

my see-no-

evil milk-eye,

 

roll over my

green horsefly,

& in the middle

of the night

 

take my elbows

deep in the red

meat of Illinois

 

—I don’t need them.