Sometimes, I live in a place called Saddle

and when I’m empty I eat sand. The dunes
gorge my guts, every time I step silver spurs click

and spin. I think about how if I was a cowboy I would
kiss all the other cowboys and spill dunes into their hungry bellies too. I’d

beg the drovers to stick their revolvers down my throat so I can taste the
metal of their scavenge, the fever of their days, the bite of their

nights. All the wide-mouthed reptiles and jaunty vultures will laugh because I don’t
know how to ride a horse, I blister my feet on red rocks and craggy ground. The sky-fire

stains my back every morning with pearl-hot rays and I tongue all the dusty men
again, one called Texas Jack ties a cherry bandana around my ankle which surprises

me, all the feral pioneers ever do is throw back the whiskey-kisses. He ties it tight and does the
gun thing, bouncing away on a caramel and white horse that makes me think of

s’mores or maybe, the dunes. Sometimes, I live in a place called Saddle. When I’m
thirsty I drink from cacti, I cut into the skins and slurp the nectar; it tastes like

cowboy lips. The vultures have licked my flesh, they know it’s venom and virus,
but they still Hyena-shriek at me while I try to climb the sand and my feet burn down

to the bone. In the distance I see Texas Jack and he’s got a white-dressed damsel
on his s’more steed. They touch lips and the dune falls out of my stomach.

 

 

***

Hunter McLaren is currently a senior at Central Michigan University with a degree in English Language & Writing and a minor in Ethics. He completed the Creative Writing Certificate program at Central Michigan and has been published in the Central Review literary magazine. He is graduating in May 2019 and has a high admiration for literature, poetry, and the English language.

 

 

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