JANIS JOPLIN & THE INVENTION OF BARBED WIRE
All morning grey flints of wind shoot
down from the foothills across the horse pasture
behind my house. Tumbleweed hard as
coral bangs against the lapboard, scratching
at windowpane with the quilled fingers
of caged men. I see them on porches
after supper listening to wind pour over
grasslands, their minds drawing waters up
from underground. This range full of unsettling
music & they, bright wingtips of sinful kisses,
sagebrush burning on lips of prairie night,
waiting for thunderheads.They will string wire
on cottonwood stakes, draw squares on the land’s
pure curve & at dusk return, asking nothing
of their wives but to bank fires & lay down
in cactus beds while they go dying,
meteors in the whiskey town. A woman stomps
rhythm there in gold shoes shouting,“get it while you can”
through the fence that owns her voice. She dies
giving birth, flowers of Texas darkness still pinned
to her prom dress. Clouds thunder by
like herds of ghost buffalo.
from The Anarchist Heart