Cantina

by Melissa

Cantina

Pulp an orange peel sky
to pure madness. There’s melody,

you wailing on the harmonica
and me on the spoons, the clattered sounds

make the sun shake.
You sing me songs of ancient wars

as we ride like it’s always toward,
to what we haven’t figured out yet.

We sweeten our tongues with agave nectar
but it doesn’t keep me from swearing so much,

my mother would say, what man
will want you with a mouth like that.

We’re in a roadside cantina
between two Ponderosa pines

drinking tequila from tin cups
and scattering feed for the chickens. 

I think about these chickens, about soft necks
slit and fresh eggs uncracked, and about the sky

pressing its blue thumb on us. It sucks the air
out of this field. As if in answer, a thunderclap

chars all that blueness, a gesture against impossibility.
Suddenly these chickens, the tequila, are perfect. 

It’s true, the world can’t help
but reveal itself to us.

Red and white feathers
and ripped open sky.