Windswept

 

Photo © 2024 Jennifer Wagner

The bones of my legs feel hollow,

wind tangles my hair,

 

the sun, past noon,

nudges my back

 

as my silhouette makes

a thin sketch limned in the dust.

 

I couldn’t read the room

for the call of too many voices,

 

or absence of one.

That’s why I’m out here

 

with the other nomads

like spent leaves

 

clustered around the edge

looking down into

 

the cold kisses

of the Colorado.

 

My skin, too, is cracking

with time—a horse

 

galloping away

back over my shoulder.

 

I glance at the oil left in my lamp

with a sense that I’m still waiting

 

for the wind to return

my spent voice

 

swallowed up

in the rush of deep black river,

 

to ride its echo back

to that which once was lush, was green.

 

 

© 2024 Jennifer Wagner

 

The Sunday Whirl

Fellowship of the Glistening Cow

 

More than annoyed,

politely furious, and suffering

from PTSD,

I was elegantly unhinged.

 

I slipped on my Levi’s,

buttoned my white silk shirt

and strode out of cuckooville.

 

Sometimes I wish I’d lost it,

let them have it,

emptied the six-shooter.

 

But, I’m glad I didn’t.

Such types don’t need my help,

they go down on their own.

Plus, I thought, these are good boots,

who needs the mess?

 

I donned my Stetson,

left my name by the door in pencil,

grinding in the tip.

 

See it there?

It doesn’t say

puppet, robot, hostage.

 

Erase it

if you want to.

You’ll have to dig out the lead,

 

listening to your library of so-wrongs

singing its own music

on that player piano,

 

sounding like

a polar bear clawing

thin ice.

 

 

© 2024 Jennifer Wagner

 

 

For the List at the Word Garden