[The Chapter of the Smoke]

*

I met the last living cowboy in Amarillo.

He wore a diaper. He confided he was last

and a cowboy when I wandered to his room,

down the hall from Great-Grandma Gulde,

who would only eat red jelly candies with root beer

in that, her last year.

Abundance of Corn, you know the news.

Whole peoples diminished to pinpricks of thirst.

The cowboys go, the Bedouin. Some days it’s mandatory

to corral the cattle and blast their mewling brains.

Map lines make right angles around former and neo-colonies.

We gum soft things, to ease history.