Written by Melissa Booey

Back home in the Tarzan junkyards
football stars are still swinging from car horns
proudly hunting out the next varsity rape while
crying over already spilled milk...
around the dumpster decorated corners
Friday-night hometown gang-bangs guarantee success.
I left you there cowboy, ever impatiently
with a gun full of gin rejection and a tin can between your teeth
all the while
you spat chewing tobacco on my retreat and I caught bullets of rum
right in the stomach because your boys
MY boys
no longer cared to man the whorehouse door…
Does it still swing open
back and
forth?
A beckoning saloon disguising apocalyptic old surrender, famous bad
habits and a one horse escape to and from this
backwards, backyard paradise…
they still send me letters about your efforts
twisting emblems barely suffered between well-lined paper palms
proclaiming: there is no sunset dreamland! no purple people eater!
driving bandwagons full of accidental opportunity
Hope packed up and avoided the sandstorm- you remember!
the one we were all warned about? but we kept camp up anyway
WHY DID WE KEEP UP CAMP
(was it just to watch it burn?
was it just to watch it go up in flames?
just to hope we’d learn that in the end
we are all the same
that in the end
we are all to
blame)