“I’m so sleepy and lonely.
Both of them.”
Frank Stanford
Wake up, Isis, wake up, see
how the Wormwood Star casts its dicey
shadow across our mother-road, how this
ghost-moon glows in our belly like
yellowcake, wake up, make that motion,
Isis, make the move that makes us fly
above, makes us dive deeper, dive way
under, Isis, witchin’ on each other
while boss-wolf lopes across the Llano Estacado,
pace for pace against the thwap-thwap-thwap
of our tires, chases down the paw
he left all lonely on our dash
Jericho, Vega, Willaree: his
ghost, the ghosts of his buildings
that boss-wolf paw glistens on the dash
glistens like a gun on the dash
Wake up, Isis, wake up hear how this
wind across the Llano Estacado
blows a drunk song our throats sing
back, blood answers lonely, beat
for beat for beat, how I wake up, how
I think: Ima’ warm now, naked, full
of us, ‘til a wolf comes, ‘til a star,
‘til we wake up haunted, you scream: O this
bruise we wash and feed and carry
20 years ahead, O whistle cut
me open, cut me
dead, I reckon: yellowcake moon’s got
boss-wolf by the throat, shakes him pretty
hard: in true night lingo this dark with no
bottom is a skin of fevers we don’t want to kick
Wake up, Isis, wake up, you say: still
there, square, you say: where the hell
am I, your thigh against my thigh,
steering wheel against our story gone
dark as Texas, miles and miles and
miles of nothing but blur, erase, and
no tears left for mama, dancing to the
old drunk song, too drunk, too old to
dream against it, wake up, Isis, wake
up, there’s another nest, somewhere,
beautiful or not-so or, at least,
there’s always that same wind
like the conjure works,
or it just doesn’t
like a star, or a wolf or the wind
© 2017, John Sullivan
Originally published in OVS
