From the Archives : Marlboro Men (2009)

Smile and see

the parenthetic creases

exhaled through, deep and cool —

this cowboy’s shadow-buried eyes

and rough noose that rounds the steer’s

gape and gleaming neck.

Wincing in leather, jeans and flannel,

the first guy is under a road sign

(one cigarette of the mind

against the flow)

as golden roasted bald

eagles flame out and the wind

is made ensign, hot and pregnant

with tumbleweed blown down

desert smokey

to the snake’s den.

Another dude just chills, leans

and ashes on the canyon’s tongue,

spits into its pitted ribbing.

To thread the grain of it, the dead

desert hand (a photographer’s) bows

the plates simmer violet and horizon.

High noon all-the-prettier for its negative.

The last one is out there lassoing

from atop his saddle-stacked stallion

with severe frontier thumb

all that fallow dreamage, riding down

dust roads from corral and ranch

to kneel and knead some clods of loam

cool to the touch after sundown,

stuck in a compadre’s pockets.

Smoke-rise and a day’s slow drone out.

Cactus hands reach for the sky.