After clinging to the trouble you know like an old
maid showing off her grandma’s rusty jewelry,
eating too many prawns for breakfast at the

Pulaski Hotel, getting in fights on a flatboat
though you’ll never wear the Mississippi
champion’s red turkey feather in your hat—Annie

Christmas is too tough with her overalls, moustache,
bordello and barrels of booze—you learn
to let go. She accused me of being evasive

but I like this more than hashing out dead
love affairs because who wants to know
when you can dance a hornpipe on deck

and roast corn in the open air. Patching up
overalls before they get holes since
holes will come. Leaving the Glades when

the sawgrass grows. I can chaw the ear off
a buffalo, I was raised on gator’s milk, I wrassled
the growl off a bear, I guzzle tabasco. Can’t float

that mess upstream, so you chop it to pieces
you burn. The hurricane blew crooked roads
straight. Someone wakes you in a stagecoach,

makes you walk across a ravine on a mossy
log under the moon, you’re frightened but
you do it and with your last step yawp.