Ampersand Tattoo

& in the likely event of a water landing

& the sea rolled her eyes 

& behind us, the rattle of the gas truck dragging its chains

& run, said the elephants

& if Darwin believed it was easier to cross an ocean than this desert

& if I’m always saying one thing 

& meaning another

& the empty train cars on the way to Marfa frame the clouds

& whatever is shimmer, whatever

& later, he draws himself a beard with the burnt end of a wine cork

& calls it time

& she tries a quieter herb for the beans, the one named conejo

& a skin-colored lizard pulsed on the wall

& every evening walking past the coffin shop as the light turned blue

& I mean to say a me-colored lizard

& the lizard-eyed men sold single cigarettes next to a fountain full of jacaranda blooms

& the massage therapist recently relocated from New Orleans

& the soccer dad reading Schopenhauer 

& one squirrel torturing two dogs at once

& teeth beg to be used 

& tails remain confused

& I’m going to write, after that, about my occasional holy holy holy

& sudden headlights in the dark

& our children up all night, faces glowing like saints

& we can blame the sheep, but we are the sheep

& our recently imploded stadium

& she pins a playing card to the wall

& calls it time

& do we still not understand how all great falling happens through air

& the minor celebrity who feared being the one to wear it worse

& reports confirm the passengers were alive when they hit the mountain

& these kind sheepskin boots borrowed from a friend for the cold

& another voice still calling elote! elote!

& if we are not the mind but the thing watching it think

& when did you know you could whistle without sound

& if it’s always innocence that changes shape in the storm

& if I promise not to cross a river deeper than my horse’s chest

& what horse

& before or after the door opens

& when the boom box on the passing bike blasts Bach

& two people discuss how deep to dig

& the new trees outside Sonic seem happy

& the lady soldiers step in time, in time

& keep practicing

& the song you sing for money or the one you sing for a song 

& the clock that plays a different birdcall each hour

& they traveled light, without shoulders or passports

& I’d do it for you

& the future you couldn’t quite imagine you were falling for

& a yesterday I find almost impossible to lift

& Rose of Sharon, Pride of Barbados, Queen of Spades           

& maybe even some carnations from the boss

& always a woman laughing her head off

& the heart makes the hard sound a car makes when started again

& when it has been all this time running

ξ

Jenny Browne’s most recent book is Fellow Travelers: New and Selected Poems, from TCU Press. She has received the Cecil Hemley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship in Poetry and two Literature Fellowships from the Texas Writers League. Her poems and essays have appeared widely, most recently in American Poetry Review, Bennington Review, Copper Nickel, Oxford American, and The Nation. She lives in downtown San Antonio and teaches at Trinity University. She was the 2017–18 State of Texas Poet Laureate, and the 2019–20 Distinguished Fulbright Scholar in Creative Writing at Seamus Heaney Centre at Queens University, Belfast, Northern Ireland.