Westward Expansion
by Joseph P. Wood
Fleck of bison
bone breaks off,
falls onto arc of arm,
Navajo stands, wind,
quick collection of hoof
beats, goodbye mountain cat,
goodbye tepee & the groundwater
which slowly drains down the pit
where Washington’s legislating, drawing
topographies as if commission by the Bible,
wagon trains, wagon circles, wagons stop
arrowed-pierced brain, like one president in
a theater, another operating table, weep weep
go the new farms scything the prairie nonstop or
the tenements on the desert edge, deeds dropping
like gossamer into the slot canyons, everyone with
a pick ax, everyone with a snake bite, one guy screens
in his porch, another imports a phonograph delivered just as
his daughter strides past her orange orchards, her daughter now
vaulting the ceilings, her daughter wincing as some two bit doctor
plunge the polio vaccine, the Saguaros & the Joshua trees, the high
green grass & the high yellow grass, all ripped up, a nervous system of
state routes, gas pump squeaking out each drop, next to the biker
bar, down the street from the Safeway, across from the slot
machine’s arm, when pulled music bursts out like a promise,
like a lover like a piss poor treaty, like mountains painted
the color of crap, like a boat sailing down a manmade
lake & all the world smells like sulfur, you wash your
hair, you pull out your poppies, you burn down your
bougainvilleas, you sneak over to the motel, right
before the sun breaks, the second-rate strippers
making their way home, all glass-eyed all rooting
through their heads for one reason their bones
could break in wind, their eyes palsy with no
warning, their father was a crop duster,
his daddy was a crop maker, his daddy
sat in jail, then came somewhere for
an apple, but the worm lived inside,
made a staircase like a spire, & if
you were a worm, you could see
the wide morning from your
pinhole in the flesh, someone
else’s cancer, someone
else’s smog covering
your ranch home,
your pool.
