Tell your friend Chin to stay on the main drags
and use the credit card I gave him, issued
in the name of Holden Caulfield.

There will be fewer misunderstandings that way
with the Aztec who pose as East Indians.
They run Best Westerns in 33 states and the District
of Columbia.

Impossible for them to remember
1968. After all,
they were dead then.

Still, you have these other bodies walking
around, limping, amputees, firing
.45s in tawny pastures of winter.
Pissing in the Mississippi. Making less
sense every day. Buying bass boats.
Drinking down in the basement alone.

Far from the distant past, but beyond the grasp
of the present, like last year's calendar pinup,
the one that sold tires for the place down the street
with the innocuous name. They do late night ads
on channel 11, when you are half
asleep, dreaming in another language.

- C.D. Stelzer