Arsenic Lobster poetry journal
Issue Twenty
Summer 2009
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Poem for Jesse James
Shenandoah Sowash

It was the year women rocked my heart and I poured vodka down their pale throats.
We'd been hurt and found solace, heads between our legs.

A Minnesotan celebration of cowboy criminality, Jesse James Day is not for the aesthetically
sophisticated. Bikers vomit into girlfriends' crotches. Everyone sings Tom Petty.

Casey's heroes were Michelangelo, Emma Goldman, and whoever wrote The Moosewood
Cookbook
, whose recipes I always felt relied too heavily on onions.

What I want to say is that women love better.

Jesse James wasn't captured in Minnesota, but he robbed First National Bank in Northfield;
it's an opportunity for the historical society to fundraise. And the kids like it.

It was the year I judged men by how many times I could hit them before they'd ask me
to stop, or threaten to hit me back. I can't bring myself to hit a girl, they'd say.

Well, you could, couldn't you?

Casey kissed with the fixation of a Sphinx. Later she left, chased a folk singer to Arizona.
She sent me pot on my birthday, and candles. It's good to chase things that go west.

What I want to say is that it's good to roam. People, like bites, like bruises, vanish. With her,
men were pathetic cartoons, and I lived to hold her hair while she vomited.

I imagine Jesse must have felt relieved when they caught him in Missouri. He knew he'd die,
and he knew he'd be lionized. Casey liked the Ferris wheel the best.

How did love taste? I never knew, bumbling gay girl, cross mother's eyebrows, later a
husband, then a phone call, more candles, gone west.

About Shenandoah Sowash

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