Scobey (Both Hands)
—For DT, who provided an image1. They drove south from Moose Jaw in two vans SK-36—headlights off to cut the reflection on the snow— They were city champions, the Peacocks The fleet behind them would be waylaid at the border: [tab70]“The fuck this look like?[/tab70] Opheim?” Everyone a gangster by degree 2. Scobey isn’t a town so much as a marker Kenneth Arnold is from here, for example The crossroads at 2nd Avenue and C Street wafted residue of heat Farmer’s Union Carriers is on the other side of the tracks. Look north at Oie Street and you’ll see What they first noticed upon entering the gym was that the Spartans dribbled with both hands David Marks, who they said drove up each game from Glasgow, made a left-handed layup Coach Davidson imagined the single-track home You cannot, he said, overplay them on their right because they’ll go left easy So they adjusted And then they adjusted The coyotes shivered close The Spartans are invincible. This means they cannot be conquered The time clicks so you hear it decompose David Marks, they say, drives in all the way from Glasgow You imagine an unencompassable expanse and you multiply that by In Scobey the wind drifts before the snow does, not just a trick of the air. No numbers. You measure defeat by the difference, breath before its signature 3. Empires transform in coke-fed dances Statesmen strut about as gang leaders (but like no gang leaders you know) Fool, you thought the joke was on you 4. MT-13 is straight, with a jig, to the border, its white lines useless in snow
[tab75](to be in that cut,[/tab75] useless)
The window’s skein dribbles and begins to drip Lights at the symphisis of Moose Jaw, “bone’s subtlest expression,” smothered by the meat of clouds He marks time on the dashboard, click of his fingers, working the left now too “Each time the love is another planet: we fall into it, freed from the emptiness of tapping and misfortune”The slow dash of melting ice on water, [tab50]the brief ring a dipping vessel gives[/tab50]
