Back to Lusk

From the back seat through man-made air;
forehead pressed to the glass, a copper
sea of upside-down wheat travels
across my eye. I know the country, grew up
here, these back woods with their cracked and
gray telephone poles, like prairie crosses,
tearing into the clouds hanging scarecrows
for their unknown crimes.

As a child, I held grandma's hand, her baby-smooth
skin daintily clasping my tiny fingers as if
she was afraid she might somehow hurt me.
A quiet and humble woman, an intimidating
arsenal of silence within her grasp, a vast
ocean of love at her careful disposal. A deadly
and miserable friend also held her wrist
at the blue vein, for how long no one knows.
A word I had never heard before, folded those hands
tenderly across her chest once and for all.

The miles roll back, blasted by 18 Wheelers,
infomercials, and cotton candy.

I knew a boy and girl there, once, in Lusk.
A small boy with a movie star grin who
looked at the world through faded Levi blues;
a skinny boy of rough-house age trying to stay alive
in his father's eyes. Apropos of everything.

A girl, small and slight (the slightness in her mind)
wore a carmine halo enveloping the face of
an angel, hidden beauty, and the break of a fatherless
heart. Always a tic and a frown behind
a perfectly smiling mouth.

We've been on this road for days, driving deeper into
the West, silently slicing the tension with our strife.

I remember Lusk, its low-level town inhabited
by low-level men. We're going back there now
to visit the dead, hopping from foot to foot
looking for familiar faces
among the coddled headstones.

Our Dust Bowl faces faded by the past
looking for answers in sunsets and Barbie dolls
and indiscriminate glances.
Our canvas stained by the brush of those
who've come before
looking at life as if through a muddied
kaleidoscope; one no one knows needs washing,
passing it from gritty hands and bleached
cheekbones to rest upon blackened eyes.

I see you with the sign of Lusk upon your skin,
and "tut-tut" my disapproval while you do the same.
Smiling through blind ignorance at the words upon our heads
we pretend to be friends and play as family
hiding behind our looks and books
and road maps no one understands.


for Stephanie