Amarillo, Texas
I hear his legs just won't stay naked. When the artist
sandblasts the socks, a new pair appears: turquoise blue,
once; white with red stripes at the tops; the American flag split
in two. The latter pair dressed the legs-severed by design-
when I saw them on the winter rangeland, the stump of the left
struck bloody with paint and initials. One tumbleweed enclosed
in the barbed wire around. Anything good requires a trespass,
though this didn't feel near as secret as it should, I-27 rumbling
close (from which the monument, alone in the field, seemed slight).
In a graffitied iteration I didn't see, the plinth was labeled SOUL
WHOSE INTENTIONS ARE GOOD, and maybe the objective stays
inscribed even under other intentions. Maybe we are good.
He keeps his stars to one calf; the rest is plain, and the tableland
leaves the two of us all too visible for whatever's further above.
Ozymandias of the Plains by Emma Aylor|Sandalwood & Vanilla Poetry Reed Diffuser
$15.00Price
Emma Aylor is the author of Close Red Water (2023), winner of the Barrow Street Poetry Book Prize. She lives in Texas, and her website is emmaaylor.com.
