Since fifty-eight
the jaycees come
rounding up rattlers
in Sweetwater, folk from all over
for a weekend in March
when snakes leave the hibernaculum
and slide back up
into west Texas and the wind.

Mr. Herrera knew his Luis and I
rode the seven-thirty bus,
had cokes and potato chip sandwiches
with Mitchell and Thomas
after Sunday school,
shot jackrabbits that ate alfalfa
in the dairy pastures.

Dad said he reckoned,
so I took Mr. Herrera’s apron
and offer and brought my knife
that Luis sharpened to a razor
and shaved his forearm hairs with.  
Frank tried that once,
sliced himself like a tomato
when he slipped.

Snake shop’s a butchery,
down the main street
past the dairy mart
and primary school,
in the yellow open scrub.  
If buzzards had noses like dogs
they’d flock, smell that
snake blood from Mexico.

Rattlesnake skinning
is all stringy guts, soft skin,
pulled teeth and poison
squeezed out of gum sockets
like milk from an old cow’s ****.  
Fancy skins with eyeholes
and lips cost ten,
specialty of Mr. Herrera.
Headless strip plus rattle
just two dollars the foot.
Cut the belly lengthwise
and rip,
easy near the backbone
where it catches.  

Out-of-towners buy anything.
Wallets, boots, belts with snakeskin
sewed or tacked on,
lucky rattles, picture frames
for proof of their longest catch.  
God-fearing jaycees doing good
for our communities will eat
deep-fried snake meat,
like tough old chicken,
but good with black-eyed peas
and sweet tea on the side.  

The women even come
once the round-up is done,
the church women, the Jesus women
with belief
and pistachio pudding
with marshmallows,
like Mrs. Howard
who shrieked “Boyd!”
and lectured about hygiene
when she saw me in my apron
and ****** to my elbows,
menacing the street.  

The biggest round-up days
we worked late, past midnight.
Past the dairy mart hours,
so once the skins
were all peeled and stretched
and the sticky linoleum
hosed down some,
Luis and I walked back through town,
deserted, dark





except lights from Roscoe and Roby
and even big Abilene
miles away, shining
across the flat nothing,
coyotes yip yip yipping
somewhere near the lake farther north.

Luis showed me how to eat peanuts
shells and all
and let me try on his brother’s
high school letter jacket.  
Late night in Sweetwater is a nothing.  
The wind never stops blowing,
and there’s nobody else
on the ******* planet.

Home to rinse my knuckles, wipe at the oil spots on the counter, warm up canned beans and hot sauce.  Powdered milk in my coffee

navy through the window.  Everywhere scraps of life restricted – slime mold on the litter under the porch, the earwig who still can’t find her way out of the sink.

In my dream,
I was accosted by sugar ants
in the sandbox,
near the honeysuckle
and curled parsley
behind the house.  
I was trying to eat the little ants
but was called in
for cheese and baloney.  

When I came in,
hopping in worn-out slippers,
the glass door slid into the kitchen
with plasterboard walls
and beige ceramic tile.  
There was a black spider
perched on the ceiling
with bright yellow knees.

Those years ago
I drew with sidewalk chalk,
made myself mazes
on the sloping driveway
too steep for basketball.
Cicadas dragged in heat
on waves, droning.
One landed on me -  
a yell caught in my throat -
but I made myself look at it
and be still, shaking.

Back then I had an old cape
& a homemade bow-and-arrow.
I’d sally forth
into the backyard, barefoot,
jumping over prickly mulch,
brushing my shins
against clouds of low love-in-a-mist
with its threaded leaves
& shy blue-white flowers.

Sometimes my sister
was back there too, tanning,
or Mom carving
little men out of cherry,
but more often I was all alone
in that wilderness
in moccasins & living
off wood sorrel,
the brighter clover, lemony.

Or in rain
I listened to my brother
play piano if he was home,
maybe Bags and Trane,
and I’d dance between shadows,
the underworld of the patches
of carpet in the light.  

Later - a little older -
I recognized that home
is more a time than a place,
and understood I would miss it
years before it was gone

so around nine years old
I went through every foot
of that high-ceilinged house,
that weedy backyard,

and made a solemn farewell
to everything in advance
trying hard to be ready
long before the time came to leave.

Each cold wave was starting to slap
me in the face and the grayness of morning
wasn’t lifting as the sun rose.  Goosebumps

had made my legs slim sharks, heavy and rough,
so I swam to shore spitting out icy water.  
I was thinking about coffee,

maybe crawling into my sleeping bag
and listening to loons’ far-off howls
until breakfast, and I reached the splintery dock

when I choked –
tried to struggle backward, without any splash
which might wash her in with me.  

Dock spiders swim.  Did you know?  
They fasten long ropes of silk and dive
for their prey, something big since no horsefly

sustains a spider the size of a mouse.  
This one was monstrous, motionless,
spiky black legs jointed white at her knees,

face-level to my wet bobbing head.  She gripped
an egg sac, papery and white, marble-sized.  
It held hundreds of tiny hers.  It looked heavy.  

I had come to her panting but now the water
or inertia maybe pushed my face close
to that enormous silent mother so I fought harder

to stay away, though if the lake had been still
I might have treaded at a distance, stared hard,
dared her to scuttle and disappear in the cracks

in the plywood-patched dock with its rotting ladder
and a dozen more spiders, probably,
white sacs strapped firmly to their bellies.  

I flopped like I’d hooked a lip, gasping, desperate
for rough open water where depth
would deter any diving hairy creature.  

Somehow I struggled to remoter shoreline
where I slid over boulders’ upholstery of algae,
shivering, legs frog-splayed, stringent and numb.  

I never felt it when I scratched my legs crashing
through buckthorn, the way to the cabin, though I saw
the lines later when I put on soft clothing

in a warm inside corner where spiders are smaller
and at least have the kindness
to keep out of sight.

A swallow of weak coffee went down
the wrong way today – I spat.

Found the pink lemonade sun rising, a watery smile
over the street and its limp newspaper,

the morning mosquitoes.  A dog barked
at a choking sprinkler, a crow screamed.
Shook out his shoulders.  

Sleepy men paddled past my trash cans
in a slow truck.  Mildew crept up the house walls,

into my nostrils.  I had a cold belly
in spite of the steam and funk of 6 a.m.

and when I came back inside my dog licked my toes,
every one.  I said to the kitchen,  
I am king, king of the world.