Cowpunk
By Diane Seuss
Do you think your suffering is exceptional?
Maybe. Maybe not.
The times are strange, no doubt.
In the heat of it, what I believed
was the heat of it, I shouted like a dockworker
that I was unafraid. Come at me,
I hollered, you can only kill me
once. There is nothing left
to take. I’ve said that before. I still hear
the echo from when the flames
licked my feet,
my fearlessness a cabaret.
Of course, there is more to take.
I’m copious and so are you.
My pipe. My roses. My stubborn
mule. My burbling
brook which must be traversed
to get to the island of blue lawn chairs.
My loaded apple trees,
raspberry bushes, and prefab on a slab,
and memories of Petra, with three
teeth, who made a salsa just for me
when she saw me coming toward her
diner, Petra’s. My high school drama
teacher, Jim, his hair bronze, his pallor
ruddy, his gait exceptional. I believe
we should marry, he said to me one night,
blowing smoke rings, driving me home
from play practice. I was Mary Warren
in The Crucible. I’d just learned
to insert a tampon. There were no
boundaries then, and Jim was queer.
His real love was the boy who played
The Boy in The Fantasticks.
I could feel my blood let down
like breast milk into the fabric
of his car seat. I loved the theater.
What luxury, putting on plays
in the middle of a cornfield.
The witch I played giving me
license to go into fits
in front of the student body.
Jim was fired, and died.
Petra’s dead.
The berry bushes are a dream.
The island is a pipe dream.
The pipe is a hallucination.
Still, I’m copious, and so are you.
