"Cebolla, New Mexico" by Helen Wickes

Raked sky, slurred clouds, the dirt road to town is a center partthrough the rye grass, and on the chamisa, a breath of ice.A retired Santa Fe boxcar hunkers in the field,housing the wares of the purveyorof Victorian undergarments. Her waresa still life in satin and velvet, chamois,and bengaline, hand-crafted exoskeletonsfrom thorax to belly, defying the logistics of bosomand breath, worn inside out when the stays wear down.Bustles cost more, they stop the eye, as do those billboardsof bandoleros, crisscrossed with cartridge belts,outside Tierra Amarilla, saying landor death, land or death.I pace the fence line and throw one rock at anotherfor the sound. The people here were too loud all dayand have gone to Chama for lunch.I sent them away, now want them home, while ponderingthe lacing of the corset, which requires an extra pair of hands,and how signature markings along a woman's naked backcan be read, revealing just who has lefthis runic imprint upon her skin.I wonder what the mind wants for the body,this cash crop, this risen dough. Many ways to bindthe living. So much keeps breaking out: the mountainsthrough the metallic, ambered light, the day, which seemseager to be lived. I could nearly give in to it,to the cold that bums cottonwoods into color,to the insistent sound of an engine changing gears.