After We Marry and Head West

I will wear the dress you bought me
in Omaha: pin-prick flowers, rick rack
trim. Of my two moods—stoic,
verklempt—I will choose
the former, become my tin-type
self: neo-homesteader in scuffed boots,
fuzzed-out braids, a chicken under
each arm. They’ll say, Her pappy
must have been a coal miner,
and he was. Now watch me
pioneer this excuse for a broom
across the floor. Watch me
keep house so good no one
can take it from me. I can
jams, yams, apples mashed to sauce.
I can corn, beans, pickle everything
in sight. Me, flush-faced. Me,
rag-handed. We make it through
one winter, another.

You will refuse the ten-gallon but wear
the bolo tie. You will take to drink
but then so will I: bourbon and we’re
wet-eyed, gin and we’re glossy,
either way we can’t dance, sleep darkly
or not at all, and so there you are,
fossicking the river by moonshine
for the promised thing you have yet
to deliver. Your trousers cuffed,
ankles brackish, and me, I don’t care
if the pan comes up empty forever,
I’ve long since given up on them
hills, prefer silver, I swear it, and look:
I have this low-slung ceiling,
my chickens, axes and rifles that un-lady
my arms, a stove that throws a heat
I can call my own—I split
that wood, piled it, carried it—
but when our child comes, he comes
sickly, silent. Not a sound for years,
then a parrot in the cot
in the corner, quilt to chin,
lashes to lashes. When you say,
My woman, he says, My woman,
and we laugh, he laughs. And I am—
your woman, lodestar to you both,
all your long life, his short one.