Sidewinder

sand drifting
across the desert,
venom glands full up
with poison - adept alert
in our star-tunic shirt, religion
comes out of our holster cocked, trigger
finger curved like the S in Old West The
Sundance Wives, white bellies crawl where
they shouldn't have messed

avenged fourfold
horizon cheats a mirage,
wavy and corruptly distorted,
sidewinder fatal to gunpowder, the
story told with a whistle, lyrics silenced
where the bullets lodge

saloon ghosts
of long ago get
louder, doc holliday
retorted, "snakes slither
an' cozy up to one another
at their own tombstones drinkin'
their own poison"

Copyright Ms. Sage Sweetwater, firebrand lesbian novelist