By: Timothy Geiger
I.
Rustic, the way wind
swaggers this prairie,
timothy grass
as a sort of transcendence.
And by grass, I mean
golden fires,
blasted sun
over frayed copper wire,
bugs and linnets,
emerald grasshoppers
swarming,
the glass shells
of every eternal humming thing.
II.
On the sixth day
the armadillo grew
into his shell, took off
his wings for good.
He settled here
because the weather
made a promise
to his claws—
armadillo hands,
new-formed stigmata.
We gave him a name,
little armored one, and stones
the very idea
of being armadillo.
III.
I do not speak Spanish
so, I didn’t know
what the man in line
at the post office wanted.
The only two words
I recognized
were Texas and sea.
I walked away from him
like I disappear
from the blind,
unrecognizable.
I thought he meant
the Gulf of Mexico
instead of saying yes
to Texas.
IV.
Pieces of spaceship
fell from the sky,
and some people
took them home
and some tried
to sell them
on ebay
claiming private
property, claiming
they didn’t know
what they had,
didn’t know that
pieces of spaceship
fell from the sky.
And seven astronauts
were incinerated.
We said heroes,
we said brave,
the first sign
like a comet
returning,
a precursor,
a prophecy, the beginning
of another age where
pieces of spaceship
began falling from the sky.
V.
In the dream of Texas
my father
raised the baby goat.
A cereal bowl
of river water
held to its bottom lip.
I was six years old
we were soaked
on our way home
from fishing
the creek-bed
where my grandfather
held his heart
and became a stone.
We stopped—
the baby goat,
my father, the stone, and I—
to teach me
to tie my shoes
with one hand,
to walk for miles
through the dust
without ever
being recognized.
Timothy Geiger is the author of the poetry collections "Weatherbox" (winner of the 2019 Vern Rutsala Poetry Prize from Cloudbank Books) , "The Curse of Pheromones" (Main Street Rag, 2008) and "Blue Light Factory" (Spoon River Poetry Press, 1999) and ten chapbooks, including the forthcoming "Holler" (APoGee Press 2021). He is also the proprietor of the literary fine-press Aureole Press at the University of Toledo, where he teaches creative writing, poetry, and letterpress printing.
"The Five Hearts of Texas was written over a period of months recalling a long drive through the state on a two-day cross-country trip from California to Ohio. Each section is a flashpoint of memory, the way the mind wanders in and out of the surreal when crossing sleepless miles of highway through prairie and desert. Disappearance figured heavily in my thoughts, both while driving, faceless through the expanse of the state, and while writing. I remember scaring myself, between pit-stops, thinking about everything hidden in the tall grasses, all the bodies and memories buried and forgotten. I remember being relieved when I finally crossed the state-line."