Rodeo in Reverse. Lindsey Alexander

Spiritualism

       Saudade [Bottle Rocket]

       Homestead, Sure

       ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

       NOTES

       These are instructions for the wrangler.

      —FRANK BIDART

      “The Third Hour of the Night”

SAUDADE [ALL YOU PIONEERS]

      Sometimes in my black dress, I move

       westward in wheat fields with infants

      or shotguns. The canvas on the wagons drawn so taut

      lightning bugs keep older pig-tailed girls like me awake at night.

       I’ve never really lived a hard life.

       Never rode a railcar to nowhere—

      I’m an impostor from the future.

      How far, how fast can my horse go? Many moons, fewer miles.

      I traveled here because I thought

       you homesteaders could help—

      given your petticoats—with seasoning cast-iron skillets, with blacksmithing, with cobbling

      and bronzing

      miniature, uneven pairs of shoes, their buckskin laces.

       I know these are a spoilt girl’s wishes. I may be

       green and weak, but I’m not dumb.

      Yet, have I gone back too far? The men here, all romantics—they wear

      suspenders.

      Oh, and how the night is clear here, the sky bright with it—

      In my time, we’ve lost most vision of the stars.

      Me? I’d love to get impressed. I text

       LOL to everything.

      I mis-belong—can’t speak for us all, but—

      Shh—

       All you pioneers, stand still—I press

      the button to pause you

      for a moment:

      Your washboards caked with baking powder, a watchman stares down the wagon circle, a woman hunched over

       the rabbit stew overcooking on the fire—

      I almost press play, but instead rewind.

      In an unlocked trunk, I find a brown bible, a carpenter’s pencil

      some man of yours whittled. I loop

       my name,

      the dash, the question mark inside.

REFLECTION ON FIRST SEASON OF A MARRIAGE

      Never get a husband. They never will make cheese plates without a fuss. Get a dog

      with thumbs.

      Sometimes when my husband does the dishes, I rampage. I rampage when

       for some reason the glasses look

      dirtier than before a washing or I remember

       a loneliness. I shape that loneliness into a broom. I use it to sweep

       away happiness,

      a state that can often lead to complacency, and also to fly off

      the broom’s handle inside me.

      We maybe all are holograms,

      a reputable scientific journal proclaims, and I tell the husband so after dinner.

      But why does this particular projection have small consciousness

       that wishes

      to sit in a straight-backed chair and recall reciting “Friends, Romans, countrymen” in

      high school and this

       little hologram goes to market and this little hologram hits zero

       stoplights all the way home?

      Also, as a projection, I wonder at my own need

      to touch. Is light drawn

      to light? Desire light?

      Why should this little light become inconsolable over the silliest—

       Oh, why is there so much of me

       in me?

       Maybe this is easy

       science: Each hologram an imagining light thought to construct,

       in which one furry projection drinks from the toilet, one projection sprouts leaves

      that fall annually and never improves

       at leaf-retention, and my husband—

      an invisible who may not exist in the kitchen behind me

      if it weren’t for his singing.

SLEEPLESS IN INDIANA, I CONTEMPLATE THE AGE-OLD ARTS

      Dog that won’t stop barking and all I can think:

      I don’t know anything about stars—

      not what they’re called or how they form, but how

      we turn stars into stickers to surprise

      our children and assure them You are better

       than normal children.

      On boat decks, sailors cry out Orion!

       and they see a man,

      but they’ve only drawn stick-figure self-portraits

      of fire and longing.

       I tried to sketch

      my face one night with stronger brow lines,

      higher cheekbones, but it was all nose, scaly

      water moccasin: a viper me.

      I paid someone who drew me in

      red with big hair, gaunter—

      the way he drew me made me

      see how lonely he thought I was. I rolled

      that portrait with wax paper and a rubber band,

       look at it during the Lenten season.

      That same spring or summer on the back of a boat, I caught a sunfish, baited him

      with gum. I didn’t like unhooking him—

      tore his lip. Astrologists

      shape stars into fish, take cracks at

      decoding futures. Palm-reading hocus-pocus:

      on