ode to boot barn calendar, curly cash passed out in the front pasture, and great tail Grackles

by William 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 William 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.