Wet steeds with chestnut
coats sip from the same milky trough.
The trough reflects the
stars; two cowboys sit nearby and eat beans from a tin.
One cowboy sighs. He has
undiagnosed cancer of the prostate; this creates uncomfortable pressure in his
groin and he shifts slightly on his log.
Another cowboy recites poems
in the simple present:
"Women carry armfuls of
silver flamingos."
"Shut up, Jack,"
the other cowboy reprimands. He's had enough of Jack's nightly poems. The steeds
lie down to rest.
"Handicapped men
puncture lemons with thermometers."
"I don't like your
poems, Jack. Stop it."
"Boys kick over buckets
of mice."
The cowboy with the prostate
cancer ignores Jack for a moment and looks at the black expanse of sky. The
night is too hot. The heat makes him irritable. He dreams of being in the arms
of his Eleanor. She is standing in front of him, breasts like peeled eggs,
wearing thin whispers of lace...
"Little girls suckle
peonies on fields of brains."
The little girls turn their
heads when they hear this description: they had no idea someone was watching.
Releasing the peonies, they run back to their houses to hide.
"I got them," Jack
says triumphantly. "Sometimes the mere act of describing reality dissolves
it."
"I don't care who you dissolved," says the prostate-cowboy, groping the mirage of great breasts. The lace crumples under his eager fingers; he notes from the texture of the breasts that they're illusory--yet another hallucination produced by loneliness and overconsumption of beans. Jack seems too pleased with himself for having dissolved the peony girls. Divine intervention would have removed the illusions from both men, but the cancer and poetry would not have disappeared, only been buried deeper into more unconscious realms.
