ISSUE 7

Dennis Cummings

 

Old Pennies

Who knows where they are now –
the men of Durango
who ate their lunch from Tupperware
under a pirul tree at the rose farm.

The men of Durango
with their scorpion tattoos,
eyes that flashed like switchblades.
Who spoke of horses and of the skill

with lassos needed to capture them.
Spoke of the grandfather who fell
from the back of a landscaper's pick-up
and became dumb as a crowbar

on the burning blacktop of Phoenix.
Of women who prompted gun fights,
and of the women who raised them,
who raised also corn and washed clothes

in plastic buckets in the Coachella.
Of uncles in the poultry farms of Amarillo,
feeding conveyors in Wichita granaries,
planting trees in Medford and Chico.

Where is the '65 Malibu I sold to Gustavo?
With blue paint fading to silver
and a headliner torn by a surfboard's fin.
The 283 with a bent push rod

and new water pump that would take him
across the Mojave and Sonora deserts.
Past blistered billboards of John Wayne
and Charles Bronson, past the crumbling churches

of New Spain, until he reached his pueblo
where streams ran down past the copper mines
and brought water that was so sweet
but turned teeth the color of old pennies.

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