Calamity Divines Clem

Clem’s friend Calamity points a dowsing rod
outside her trailer in Free Will, Arizona--named
for the lack of people rather than laws or limits--
at his chest like it found a new magnetic pole.
“No water or underground pipes in here,” he says.
Calam’s in a denim dress with her hair teased
into some kind of shrub, toy birds hairpinned in
flight around her head, a kid’s cartoon scene
of someone just gobsmacked by an iron pan.
300 pounds of voodoo, menace and Jah love,
who moves sexy as island palm trees in funk
harmony with offshore breezes and ukele blues,
red licorice lips wound curious as sex questions.
“I must have slept with 100 boys like you,
wonder pours from their skin in honey streams,
shoots from their eyes in lighthouse beams,
and I guess one more won’t matter much,
seeing as how I do all I can to balance out
this world against the black weight of doubt.”
Clem gulped. A noise couldn’t be heard
filled up the Sonoran sky, quantum anxiety
of sorts, zinging round in a weather front,
something big seeks to thank him no matter
what he wants. “I never wrote well enough,
Madam Calam. Never earned your bed.”
“Hell, man, I prophesy to horned lizards
loud as civil defense sirens every night,
and the future sure comes and goes
much as I announce, but you try to find
a place for that! No. It’s guys like you
try to right a whole in this emptiness,
and my answer is to strip, give you
my earthquake of bliss, till you lose
the hospice voice that says give up.”
A hand rose, turned, bent. Clem went.
Then the moon came down, and stole
away with the town, much as Calamity
foretold, such as Clem wrought.