Oil Patch, 1980

Juke town, bible town
good life served up like big hair
and chicken-fried steak, pump jacks turning
smell like tar in the air.

In the Campbellite churches
God still speaks in horse, the old
men spit and abuse each other’s
red-chapped hands—wind never
moves their cattlemen’s hats. Their
thousand-dollar boots hide under double-knits—
but the girls still say cute, and cruise the
truck stops. Only one tune on the juke box,
the chorus always,
baby, I got to . . .

Booze is on tap, no red Chryslers sell
outdoors, but the place still doesn’t speak
easy, best house in town is an auction barn
gutted for parquet and chandeliers,
the cowboys and preachers and tool-
pushers gone to seed from slick to slick.
Out on the bypass the flat light of morning
pours from a Coors can light as a suburb.
This could be the last boom—baby, you got to
get me some bucks, some pot, some
righteousness, good leases, Cadillac,
house on the fifteenth—

Baby I got to have some!