from Ventriloquies

Deputy

Word was he vowed to kill a judge,

said he would shoot him in the throat.

We found him propped & seething like

a copper coil in noon’s black thicket,

all that dust & skull stilled purer,

potenter in him, & he’s

just waiting at the pay-phone

too damn drunk to fight, old hate

come dribbling, spitting from the hole

of noiseless yelling as we stop

the cruiser, heat hitting like a fist

we brush aside, pull our pieces

on him crazy as a scarecrow

in the empty wind, his claw

snarled round a Dixie cup

stained Kool-Aid red & reeking

isopropyl, cringing when

through cauls of grease-stiff flannel

& black knotted skew of hair

the stash sings answer to my hand.

I make him watch the thirsty dirt

down his last sweet drop.

Word was he was a full-blood,

son of a chief, when they had chiefs:

the backdrop showed him four-foot-ten

the needle stuck at eighty pounds,

the record: positive. We cussed

& scrubbed our hands, laughed at his

pathetic threats, his boy-sized body,

boots flapping on the wrong feet.

Someone put a dustmop on his head.

I’m a man! he howled I am a man!

& we laughed even louder then.

–first published in Birmingham Poetry Review