Marlboro Man by Shelly Norris

You allow clandestine access, leave

the barn door ajar a scoche

just enough to incite our curious minds 

to explore the dark store of man-smelling tack.

From the cold hollow of your absence 

we conjure a language 

to guess at the secret

names of steel and leather parts:

bridle, halter, reign, 

saddle, stirrup, bit, cinch.

Deep in our bones and sinew

we know full well the verb of each object.

Galloping out of the sunset high astride your steed

you look handsome, vague, down upon 

and through us. We could mount wild mares

in heat yet never amount to your legend:

Scofflaw riding herd into the saloon, 

wind roper, Star of the highway mural 

who creates the sixteen-hand-high

ten-gallon hole in the Universe.

Serviceable heifers, we could be

bought and sold. Interchangeable 

with every other broad

you taught us our price.

Still, with a flick of ash, the toss of a butt

crushed beneath the heel of your boot

you set us snarling against

each other like barroom bitches

while in a cloud of smoke you vanish 

leaving a trail of dust impossible to follow.  

Leaving the wind smelling of Canadian Mist, 

Corinthian leather, wild yellow roses. 

Shelly Norris ripened in the wild west on a farm in Wyoming. She hails from a long line of post-Civil War migrants, pioneers, scofflaws, and illegitimates; wherever there is a “bastard” break in the lineage, that’s her line of people. She currently resides in the woods of central Missouri with her husband John, two dogs, and seven cats. Please, don’t judge. Working in the shadows grading sub-par college essays, advocating any 12-point font other than Calibri, and editing for other writers, she has been slow to send forth her own writings into the cold world of rejection and possible publication. Her poems appear in Verse-Virtual, Uppagus, Spillwords, Academy of the Heart and Mind, The Drabble, vox poetica, The Cabinet of Heed, and several theme anthologies by Sweety Cat Press, as well as The Owen Wister Review, Open Window Review, Blood, Water, Wind, and Stone: An Anthology of Wyoming Writers, and The Writer’s Club/Gray Thoughts.  She currently wrestles with several manuscripts trying to strongarm them into telling her what they want to be. More recently, she has begun to publish short fiction.