Gallowed Be

The nearest land- fill’s nowhere

near & no one is

to blame. We burn the year’s

news—in the meadow, in the mind,

till the crosswords & the funnies wilt

to winterkill. I trace

the day an epitaph

in ash: “Hallowed Be

Thy Games.” Every story is

ashamed to be true. My father’s now

a widower & no one

is to blame. My sister

doesn’t laugh, plots to live

on land turned tame—where the soil’s kissed

with concrete, yields no wine.

It’s all the same to me, if we winnow,

if we win. I tell

myself the story that I’ll visit

distant cisterns, let their sallow

walls win me over, lift my low

life & lowly frame of mind. My father

gets fined for burning out

of season, says he doesn’t

get why. So the days go slow & I

climb a pulsing fence that stops

no bucks nor does, observe

the neighbor’s piglets wallow

in their loam. (Still,

the world is wide, if the hymnal’s hold

true, & every beast has a mind to get loose

from a valley fallowing

toward foul.) My sister braids my waist-

length mane, says, “This

place is lame.” I try to tell her

no one is to blame, but the sky is

so hollow it swallows every name.