Old Rugged Grave Crossed With a Brand Artist

he rode
a coffin-head horse
he had one foot in it already
his sunday soldiers chased her
and what they called her canner
a horse the haters say is only good
for the slaughterhouse little did they know
her horse was gouch-eared rounded tips because
of frostbite but could hear forty dead men meaning
a full cartridge box forty rounds

in no time
she had him
and his sunday soldiers
looking like desecrated vegetables
union dehydrated from the civil war
formed into yellowish squares not too long
after that she embalmed his beef and shrunk him
to the size of a haversack a hundred and eighty pounds
reduced to a one foot square

saturday night
she drank john barleycorn
took out her lucifers them matches
to fry fresh fish his new recruits

a donkey
is a member
of the ass family
genealogy takes its names from roll call
taken at the old rugged grave crossed with a brand artist

jenny jack molly john
reverse the cross† and
you get a hinny

Copyright Ms. Sage Sweetwater, Celebrity firebrand lesbian novelist