Drought

Tar strip heaven

and my mother said they used to chew the stuff

blackrock tooth cleaner

for a gypsy-eyed little boy

“Eugene! Eugene!”

and he prayed for rain

and prayed for work

and prayed for pain

and prayed, I bet, for death

(near the end, anyway)

(as Eugene might have)

with a blackrock tooth cleaner

and pocket full of jumbled-dirt

Squirt-eye told me about the grasshoppers

grasshoppers as big as life

or bigger than life

(depending on the size of life)

and her father nailed them to the chicken coop

and watched while dark clouds came

I stood from eighty years' distance

I stood in the middle of a cloud of swarming grasshoppers

they bit at my eyelids and tore my lip

the blood pooled around my ankles

ankle deep and shouting from the soil

and the grasshoppers hit the window panes, dropped dead as dead can be

my father nailed them to the chicken coop

and watched while dark clouds came