sam, bangs, and moonshine
© 1998 Devon Koren

they were talking about america
those gardener kids
(it's so funny to watch the way their lips change
after you get a little liquor into them)
they're brownbagging paragraphs
and drinking the poetry down
the mountains in tennessee never really loom,
they just hang
lazily
(still-life)
in the moonshine fog and take a little bit of
wind to the rock
(inopportune blow)
someone left a notice on the door
for vacancy, for vanquishing
sam noticed, stuck a dagger through
(she always wanted to be robin hood
or little luther with his hundred and one
quiz show questionnaire)
the afternoon turns
running cattle down past the tobacco patch
barefoot
the mud in the toes, the red clay seeping through
with wink, with walk
field of clovers, daisies in the sagebrush
they have one week--still sam
whittles away the time with her
pocketknife
and little mary and josephine's noses are sunburnt and that
place where the straps of the bathing suit
criss-crossed
leave the little white x's at the nape of their backs
the swimming hole's still open, though the factory closed down
three weeks ago
there's another kick in
sam's adolescent belly
and she knows rent's not the only thing past due
she flicks the cigarette, tucks the little ones under
and places maternal kisses on the soft brown bangs
matted with sweat on their foreheads
johnny hasn't been seen in seventeen days --
but there's this nasty little hole in the back of the
cookie jar
where everyone suspects he jumped bail
so the seismograph in the town hall
waits
for that earthquake to never happen --
in appalachia it only rains
and only after you've closepinned
the last
rags of your life
out to dry