The Fourth Night of the Fifth Year Stop reading: Things have gotten tense Between the Farmer and the Bodybuilder The Farmer locked in the barn. Jed wakes The largest rooster, which, in turn, interrupts His old, bitch mother’s wild dream. Night After night drunk as if pulled through a kaleidoscope Basal carcinoma breeches its surface A mighty flip for the almighty then back — BACK Through the airlock. It’s silent here amongst no chicks Which switch as though ejaculated. Standing nude, monolithic In the sun, the Farmer forced to clean up after the Bodybuilder. Stars drip from the padlock lovely beneath the latch. I can see you, Jed. The Sixth Night of the Fourth Year You can continue to stop reading: Things ain’t well Between the Farmer and the Bodybuilder The Farmer has kept in the big, red barn And Milk, who, it is written, Whether or not anyone reads, has continued to Dream prodigiously like a pig eating its own shit The Caesar wears like a pendant. Butchering’s 50 percent What isn’t written, she always said, and that is to say: Milk’s lunches have gotten slim. Less meat landing at the padlock, less meat on the Farmer. One man opening his hand toward another Will take something for memory. Jed takes But won’t remember. The Eighth Night of the Third Year You mustn’t read on: Mother is dead Under a blanket dancing all of her little ones Their loudest cottons torn along floorboards Dancing through the eye of a needle. No mountain passes but saying—oh—saying there are Mountain passes cut and in between Remind me: The Farmer and the Bodybuilder The Farmer locked in the big, red, burning barn So many years ago, still, are cocooned back-to-back and hung From the bark of the Alamo tree. I, the poet, sing to them every night After night drunk as if pulled through a kaleidoscope Hoping you will love.