John Macker

ADVENTURES IN THE GUN TRADE

O Outrider! Del Rio sez Your language speaks armistice But your actions bleed gun food for fire Food for thought, Bill answered. You can see them now huddled Beneath the scarp Billy, Coca & Del Rio, windblown, scarfaced sharing the same ochre-stained stone squatting there intently sharing a fine reef of Jamaican, the bottom of Bill's holster (the one emblazoned with the heraldic white knight of Paladin) skims the rock back & forth as he shifts his welterweight from boot to boot. Defines & defends for his native Anton Chicoans, post-structuralism with A juniper branch right there in the dirt Using the call & response as if It was something spiritual if not parochial If not the blues & the stone rhythms of the territory populate every crag, every tear & bone I want to crawl into Billy's holster I swear replace his trigger with the self What does it feel like empty? Having not bruised the world yet with His soulful intuition Having not divested himself of Planet ritual All that remains to intuit from here: Occasional hungry sex A good horse, death. There is a Storm growing over Gallup & white stars fade unflinchingly into a featureless red sky.

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