THREE WORKS
BY MARK SPITZER
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WINDING DOWN THROUGH WOLF PASS
to another eco-gathering
of pagan luddite misanthropes
I brought my broken rear-end gears
to Durango Colorado
where every year
a ritual occurs
thanks to a legend's
barbarous words
whose phantom we honor
with whiskey and beer
as we place stories
on the altar
this spring
somebody brought
survey stakes
others books
pinecones
rocks
and something wooden
with an alien weave
I couldn't figure
it out
until I heard
the guy explain
it came from the grave
and then I remembered
Abbey's directions
that his corpse be taken
from his coffin
stuffed inside a sleeping bag
and dragged by stinking
drinking comrades
to a secret place
in a very green place
then buried there
to fertilize
a cactus
like the chunk
I held in
my hand
eroded like a rodent skull
staring up at me
telling me to keep
my lips zipped
and I did
almost.
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OUT ON THE ST. VRAIN FLOODPLAIN
a big old golden eagle
ripping into roadkill whitetail
it hunkers there like a buzzard of death
all shoulders and muscles
and darkbrown and hunchbacked
its long gouging neck
delving the depths
of the troughed-out
gored-out
ribcage exposed
this creature tearing carrion
rends the flesh
from the inside out
dwarfing the magpies
hopping around it
this is why I always return to the West
in Europe there are no terrible eagles
no foothills, no Rockies
no red rocks
no fresh kills
I compare this bird to some turkeys of the past
no doubt this monster
weighs 35 pounds
or 40 - I spook it
FOOMP! its wingspan expands
longer than myself
as its talons lift
dripping with viscera
and it's off - - -
to the knotted cottonwood
where it perches above
the dark silhouette
never
in Paris.
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ANOTHER OBVIOUS OBSERVATION
At a Citgo in New Mexico
tourists from Texas
buy Navajo blankets
and postcards souveniring
historic Route 66
(which doesn't even exist
on this strip)
then hop back on the Interstate
never even knowing
the blood of what
they bought
...
Stupid Americans
a pox upon
yr map.
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