Cowboy Story

George Murray
From:   The New Quarterly, #105, 2008.

The books sit on the shelf like a row of coma patients
in a ward, a series of selves no longer able to learn
and trapped at the point of injury: the last page.

At the donor clinic I offer up my arm to the spigot
of the needle and think, as I see the bag fill
with blood, there goes some of me. But that's a lie,

for as soon as it exits, the fluid is its own object,
with all the attendant filthiness and foreign infection
that implies, and has no meaning in terms of me.

Life happens like a cowboy story in which two
lines of gun-wielding men walk slowly toward each
other, skinning those smokewagons until the sky is white

with exploded gun powder. Out in the open, shooting
past all logic, they advance until either reality is killed
or they fall. I'm not saying there's no control,

but rather that control is all there is. Keep reading
to find out how it ends. The only cover offered is
the bad aim of enemies, and an adherence to the script.

Poem 1 | Poem 2 | Poem 3 | Poem 4 | Poem 5 | Poem 6

George Murray's works copyright © to the author.