Poem: Do Not Tell the People That Wil Myers Has Been Traded

Lamentation: Wil Myers, when they traded you
To far, awfullest Florida,
A rifle report of no origins
Snapped across the prairie.

Patricia Neal looked up from her dishwater, if only for a moment.
And then resumed drowning her hands.
In Holcomb, old bones nestled deeper in the loam.

In Eastern Kansas those who married at 19 threaten their children
With Bill Self on a Shelf … and you.
“Wil Myers never did such a thing,”
Bloodied boys are told.

What will spare their husbands,
Whose eye sockets are filled by stupefied tumors trained to see
Nothing more than the defeats of this, the only county in the world?

In Western Missouri, there is a sameness to droughts and wives.
Two-pack-a-day communions, elected beasts wandering the diners and
Aching out smiles for the slackened honkeys
Who whittle at time until the pharmacy opens.

Their clapboard huts, mottled and foreclosed,
Lean and chirr in the wind.

Where is their consoling, Wil Myers?

Drumfire of the Plains, Moses of Switchgrass —
You are needed at once.

We are but blind pullets fallen from our nests.