ode to boot barn calendar, curly cash passed out in the front pasture, and great tail grackles
by Will A
O the fair Texas winds have brought blowing
a fresh Boot Barn calendar into my new Houston mail box
along with the American mythos laid out bare:
rugged men on rugged landscapes on rippling horses
men who smell of sandalwood and fire smoke
men who do not feel the need to carry a gun
because their mighty right hook is enough to clock cold
anything short of a bison
O these men, who are surely not models,
smell of fresh baseball mitts and protestant work ethic
likewise, I have forgotten to mention
that I have switched my deodorant from OLD SPICE BEARGLOVE
to NATIVE DEODORANT SEASALT AND CEDAR
which might be a far cry from their cowboy musk but still smells nice
because life needs change, you have to switch it up
so January, February, March, and April are just men on horses
lassoing, riding with their buds
and May is a gap-toothed woman in a yellow sundress
smiling at me and a half million other recipients
of the yearly Boot Barn calendar
but I go to volunteer at a farm on my weekends
and the Killdeer screech at me from their shaded nests
tucked underneath Swiss Chard and Kale plants
so we work around them, weeding,
throwing the Hen Bit and Nut’s Edge to the chickens
and I cry out like the birds in my nightmares:
where have all the cowboys gone, I scream,
and when I wake I know for certain
they are not in this calendar
but scattered where you left them out to dry
like the time when I was logging for Curly Cash
and found him passed out in his truck
in the front pasture surrounded by plastic bottles
of Coke Zero and Lord Calvert
because his wife had boiled and not steamed
the previous night’s vegetables
O here are the fields where the cowboys lie
less mythic
O I’ve given up drink
and I’m trying to give up sadness
so at the farm I watch the great tail grackles
preen oil slick feathers
and open their mouths to make fire alarm sounds
and I work in the flower bed, picking weeds out
the cracking clay soil
as a lady bug lights onto my head
wrapping itself in my hair
and the chickens give me eggs
speckled and blue like pebbles
O it is June: a woman leans, tending a fire
in a cave mouth, whiling away dusk
O I feel the sun
crawling into my veins
O Curly’s been dead for years now.
Photo of Will A
BIO: Will A is a Kyiv-based writer. He received his MFA from Florida State University. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Disco Kitchen Magazine, Entropy Magazine, and Jai-Alai Books' anthology "Waterproof." You can find the rest of his work at will-a.com.