The Conjuring Dance Of The Dust Devils' Ballet Poem by Robert Rorabeck

The Conjuring Dance Of The Dust Devils' Ballet

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Out on the dusty field,
After the finish of the game, the pack-up
And movement of the rusting carnival
A long ways down the night’s road,
The empty-naked bodies are turning themselves
Around,
Humans and horses,
Lucky wives and misshapen inebriates,
They are something alike,
Compound adjectives of field and class,
The worm’s disease through the harpsichord cages
Of the empirical game;
Roses curling yet healthy out the wrought-iron bars
Of the cemetery’s crackling window.
I recognize a lover I though I had from the snowy
Field of the television,
Just her legs reclining out from under the thunder brush-
The naked long-haired Navajos are coming with dollars bills
For the ride,
Coming up both ways along the satanic reservation.
Their eyes careening into the conjuring dance of
The dust devils’ ballet;
I will not give them a ride, because my deal is over:
The tent is down, the stakes unearthed:
Its time to move on,
to take these Mexicans to the Chinese buffet.
As I leave I see
The gallinas have eaten through the chicken-wire;
But they are not hypnotized-
They are clucking down in the dry riverbed
Where Billy The Kid carved his name,
Still the youthful archaeology of the Lincoln-County War;
But the great waters are gone,
Turned into salty curbs where spilled cars lay
Overturned with red hoods like terrapins who have given
Up and now wait quietly for the circling lullabies
Of buzzards beneath strange nebulas,
While the casinos flicker on, wheels of chance turning
For all of them- The horizon green with the sick energies,
Humming to how things have moved on.

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Robert Rorabeck

Robert Rorabeck

Berrien Springs
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