Back when Suez was a hot topic, it was
the Gladiator of Tennessee vs. the Alabama Murderer,
and my fella took a few blows but knocked out the champ,
defeated in Montgomery, in record time!
The amateurs all came looking.
If you want victory, I said, you must train like him, eat like him,
and then you must become him, the way Daniel Day Lewis
became Christy using only his left foot.
Millard Fillmore asks for your medical history.
Working the counter of the desert saloon, you must water
the cowboys yet move in Slushies, think in shorts,
cargo and bermuda. From here
he will locate you with his gun, whose shadow is being danced
to itself, and you must envision yourself among
difficult droughts, unclassified coursers,
the pony and her thrushy stream
of urine leaving traces through the land.
None of it’s on the maps.
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