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Show Go Love/150 across her face the instant she sees me. Maybe, I'm thinking, this is Shurl's mother, come to give her some shit for putting my mind to work on a body four days dead, how it might be, how Mama might be. They nod at me and smile like Christmas morning, walk on past, the door opens and shuts, more of the sick-sweet air, only spiced up with woodpecker racket, his hammering redoubled with the woman's feigned threat. A concrete bench appears at the far end, where I can see that the horse that neighed from the far pasture is a big paint. Mostly white, his colors bleed through. Carved on the concrete bench- Love Wins All. Inside, O.W. has seen what's inside Mama's casket. What his eyes see-love wins all? Something's turning here, a piece of my mind connects dumb tmckdriver with when semis roll uphill outside Rawlings, Wyoming. Snakes writhe on fishing lines, I see them where fish ought to be The instant my knuckle cracked O.W.'s incisor, I heard get help, he's killing me, Joey' Love wins all? Shawn Terrence Lord stares from Mama's briefcase-hadn't she prepared to die? Didn't we have that talk? I'm sitting here, obliged to pay attention. This flat piece of delta land bleeds east to the Mississippi River, seventy miles from where I sit, the West Helena bridge where the blues man jumped off and swam with a spoonbill, and it's said that boys fishing the caved-in banks still find Spanish armor and rifle ball amidst the mounds where bone shards lay in long grass like wavy hair Love Wins All, that's something Mama'd say, or maybe just go love. Joe. Can't you just turn loose and love. Don't wait for fire or flood. Go Love The flame-headed woodpecker-for all time now a spirit bird sent to hammer its message into my hard, hard Stepwell head. Tilt- O-Whirls blind in the summer snow. Dumb truckdriver? |