Crippled by mud, here sings the busboy.
The fat black river recovers the plain.
Red gills smile in bubbling weeds.
I’ve come back to work this dim rank patch.
Again eat the meat from customer’s plates.
Send the fat and the acid down to the sea.
The buried thief, beating my back, wanting out.
The slap of thick sharp grass.
Arriving through the hole, uneaten cow.
I taste their spit and savor it.
Every town grows bottom weeds.
From the Trinity flats to the rotten Pearl.
I steal from college mothers, money from blood.
Dropped in the weeds by illegal birds.
Another dot against the flooded field.
Bottle in reach, I wash down the chalk.
What I saw stir the channel floats by belly-up.
A severed leg fills the sky with rust.
I see straighter asleep, laugh the fleshless laugh of dream.
Down in the well, a thirsty dog barks, bloated with poison.
Drunk on the herded stink that surges down, life’s way.
Palm cool on a smooth glass neck.
My cuts fold open, a map of fire.
-John Hicks
