Mary Plays the VFW

Saint Paul, 19 September 2003

Strumming Daddy’s guitar in a Montana college town

Mary plays the VFW like a chorus of marching highballs

Resounding Cowboy Set Me Free retreats a long-fretted neck

Blazing from her mouth like a match flame held to promise

Sworn off paramour ski bums and gentlemen wranglers

Mary plays the VFW like a chorus of marching highballs

Cooking parboil riffs stretched over closing time chords

Past pirouettes of jitterbug dancers loopy on peanut shells

Tapping pearly refrains to undercurrents of reprisal

Mary plays the VFW like a chorus of marching highballs

Vacated veterans of foreign wars seize roundhouse slugs

Of chained lightning strained by the chum of grief

Concealing Indian-corn teeth and a nevermore shiner

Mary plays the VFW like a chorus of marching highballs

Wed to a hot-headed Wyoming wildcatter named Johnson

Cast to dust-caked rigs and surrendered to oil undiscovered