She bush-pushed out jammers,
soul crushed the rest,
farm boys waved their caps,
exposing themselves.
She shouted-
In your dreams, limp-****!

Molly Magdalene taught her first:
if you’re going to be bad,
live your gimmick.

Juliet listened,
She was Demolisha:
roller derby queen,
brick hips and hair like barbed wire,
lips black as tar,
eyes smoked in coal.

I, her groupie’s part-time boyfriend,
was her tire iron, solid, used in crisis.
Rode shotgun in her truck toward Waco,
useful for singing Sinatra off-key
to keep her awake,
scribbling bios for the program:
Queen of Quake! Derby darling of devastation!
Empress of impact, Siren of slam!
"keep at it", she said.

At her father’s house
walking across the living room,
threading through a cave of trash bags,
yellowed newspapers, broken lamps,
into a back bedroom stacked high,
a hoarder’s shrine to nothing.
The bureau sat buried in the dark,
hard oak,
grain heavy as muscle,
something Juliet respected.

Her father stayed sunk in his chair,
TV glow staining his face,
cigarettes ground into carpet,
nicotine walls dripping beer sweat.
He barely nodded,
muttered bitterness,
as if we weren’t even there.

I knew then-
he had made her a villain
long before Molly Magdalene
polished her into one.

In Baton Rouge, gas station past midnight,
a boy appeared,
a Baby Ruthless shirt stretched across his chest,
skinny arms banded in green.
His mother, pink barbie sweatshirt,
a purse full of pens and candy bars,
watched him hold out
a crumpled receipt to sign.

Juliet bent low,
almost tender,
Then shouted:
In your dreams, limp-****!

And the boy laughed,
laughed like he’d won,
while his mother burned with fury,
damning her to hell.
*******, *****. Juliet countered.

Back in the truck
she sipped coffee bitter as ash,
rings rattling on the wheel.

“This,” she said,
“is what lasts.
Not when you’re bad.
When you’re the dirt worst.”

Note
from you
yesterday.
right-leaning hand,
halfway to escape;
mail from the grave- so you.
map to cash, rules to live by.
I burned it all; fed your gray urn.
Come spring, I’ll quarter you to far woods,
so you can’t find all your pieces again.

What does wind think of the camp on North 7th as it moves
under the overpass- bright blue nylon riffled,

work shirts on a rope, the entry flap breathing,
an old man’s head bent over chessboard, a rook tipping over?

What does wind know? Easy to say - nothing,
to say it knows nothing sweeping the day’s trash

down the avenue. The crawl says: fires in the West;
men with AR-15s; a mother and child face-down in the river;

children in cages, says the rise of this, the fall of that.
We say the wind knows nothing as it drives fire like a blowtorch

across the land. We blame the grid - the lineman, the line -
though we know better. We say the rain inside the wind

knows nothing, as mud swallows houses, houses fall to sea,
floods push through cities, the ocean takes back land.

We say wind and rain know nothing. We say there’s nothing
to do. The wind tussles our hair and goes on.

A tarp snaps. A rook tips. The old man uprights it.
The wind takes its turn.

We play on the corner till the streetlights thin
and stars pinprick a corkboard sky.

Dinner is anytime: bologna on white;
Kool-Aid cut thin with tap.

No hurry home unless for the news -we don’t.
We want what’s coming, not what’s been.

Paper fortune tellers flutter open / close.
She writes the answers first.

Lift one flap: your dog dies. Another: a prince.
Another: best party in town, no dress required.

He lifts a flap: her name-
“meant for you,” her sister whispers.

Then rain- blue-lined paper caves;
ink loosens, futures wash mid-fold.

At This Street & That Road, a drunk witch
swears Saturn and Jupiter will make us rich.

She forgets conjunctions come every twenty years.
Lunch money turns to lottery slips.

Rounding the corner, the futures
sign their names where ours should go.

On the bus, on the plane,
a child kicks the seat,
Loudly sings a half-song
on repeat.

Watch the adults wince,
the parents hiss under their breath,
their patience thinned to wire.

They stare harder at their safety cards,
at crossword clues,
at the blue glow of movies
they won’t remember.

This is the invitation-
Not the kind printed on cardstock,
but the kind that comes with grape jelly fingerprints,
with questions about the clouds,
with shoelaces that won’t stay tied.

Tell me more about that dragon.
That’s not a shadow, it’s a mountain.
What would you name the ocean
if “ocean” was taken?

When they cry,
que the jokes,
make a peanut packet talk-
and the aisle is lighter for it.

How could this not be better
than folding yourself into a seat,
guarding your stiff silence?

Soon they’re gone,
dragging backpacks like spare limbs,
wet-cheeked or grinning.

I sit in the quiet,
watching the passengers
already back to their closed faces.
The question stays:
how could that human response
not be better
when the world hands us
small, loud,
unrepeatable gifts-
and we hand them back unopened?

A Stepmother’s voice cuts
through the campground:
Who left the cooler open?
Who moved the ******* cushions?
Her words snap the branches.

My father, just arrived,
hat wet with sweat,
stooped to tie the boat off at a tree,
met at once by her complaints,
her tally of our failures.

Her glare pressed hot against my back.
I climbed the pine,
legs scraping bark,
eyes fixed on the shimmer below-
anywhere but here.

She was there:
elbow on the water’s skin,
hair spread like wet silk,
eyes pouring over me.
Come with me, she said.

Where?

Down there.
She smiled, copper arm pointing to the deep.
It’s warm.
The fish brush your skin.

I remembered: sirens don’t save you.
They keep you.

She dove,
silver tearing water’s face,
and the lake closed like a locked door.

When she rose,
her shoulders gleamed like knives.
Laughter rolled toward me,
the same heat as the shore,
only sweeter.

Your turn.

I leapt.
The lake’s mouth closed over me.
Green-gold everywhere.
Her hair against my cheek.
Her tail’s slow beckoning.

I followed
until the light shattered above.
I almost stayed-
not to drown,
but to live where the voices could not reach.

Yucca wind cuts through my coat,
the markers blur and fade.
I rode a while on golden dice
and now I walk in gray.

The sun still hangs, a blistered coin,
A whisper left of heat.
I shake dust
from a hollow skull
and drift on tired feet.

Cantinas hum their broken hymns,
the meek slip into pews,
they trade their vows for bottle rims
and saviors they can use.

The stew’s been warmed and left to cool,
her smile is soft and deep.
I pull a blanket to her chin,
watchover while she sleeps.

Their toys lie mute in cedar drawers,
their shoes set by the door,
and she still scrubs the cracking tile
as if we could make more.

I left my heart in a canyon’s jaw,
too hard to dig it free,
and let the desert keep it warm,
the way her hands keep me.