you think of hot evenings watching cottontails scatter
at the yip of waking coyotes
you think of watching clouds of heat lightning
glimmer like pearly gates
you think of baseball fishing in the pond
and across the water the boys are striking out
you think of working the sluice box
a few nights more and just maybe just maybe
striking rich you think of that old diviner
striking the cave rock for arrowheads
you remember striking out west for the territories.
you say how many miles there are in Texas
you say you’ll have a Mexican Coke
you say your daughter-in-law’s pregnant
and your nephew’s wife and your cousin’s son’s wife
and your own daughter
you say your father but not your mother have gone before
and rest in the sleep
you speak of your father but not your mother
you say you’ll grow old before your cousin
can finish his story the one about sleeping at the Greyhound station
you say you don’t know what happens now
you get your picture made with all the relations
you get your socks put on and your gloves
you get a new pajama set from Neiman Marcus
you get made up like you’ll go to town or maybe even Dallas
you die simple-like
like taking off your coat
J. R. Forman lives on the staked plains of Texas where he teaches at Tarleton State University. He is a 2025 Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominee. His poetry, scholarship, and translations have recently appeared in Louisiana Literature, Apple Valley Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, West Branch, Midwest Quarterly, Ezra Pound and the Spanish World (Clemson), and T. S. Eliot: The Rose Garden and After (Routledge).
Euphony Journal 