Two Snowy Egrets land.

One is lame.

Surrounded by cattails.

The other ascends.

You tied  shoelaces together
and tried to hang yourself
from McMillin’s
basketball
hoop.

The neighbors talked about
it for years over flapjacks
and grits.  

They couldn’t understand why
anyone would attempt
suicide. I knew
the reason;

you were homely
and dull, kind of
foul smelling

too.  You failed
at  death, me
at life.

Remember the afternoon we watched
the police drag the lake searching
for the Williams boy as we drank
Dr. Pepper?

There was a hell of a crowd
you had both hands on
Shelly’s *** & she
****** down her

thighs when the kid
bobbed up, face
pale blue, eyes
wide.

when you died
i turned to him and
then i realised he
wasn’t there
either

Canada Geese wedge over the river
this evening as four Snowy
Egrets fish bankside; on
the Sixth Street
Bridge, a man

dangles  his pecker between the rails
and streams jaundice yellow, a Ford
squad passes, flashes a red
beacon and drives
on.

Doctor split his chest free
cracked  it wide  open
like a blessed pit

Then  doc tickled Gabe’s
heart with a scalpel
made it clean

Again he can go skirt
chasing and set his
**** straight

So the process can
begin again with
the pain

You probably think this poem is about
Lisbon, Portugal, where women
dangle your imagination like
a necklace of sun-dried
currants. No,

Lisbon, Iowa, a town twenty-two
miles removed from the 21st
century, where I stopped
for coffee, flipped eggs
and a place to ****
on my way home

from  god what  a day;
a man ordered a plate
of Rice Krispie bars
and tea—shuffled

his wallet for ten minutes,
made me nervous
like he was on
Thorazine;

it was the last
time I visited
Lisbon.