Showdown

I scraped my chapped fingernails
Along my tumbleweed stubble jaw
In the iron sun’s breathy haze.

Feeling for my ghost-guns,
I was waiting for Saul,
Trusting a switchblade
I shouldn’t know how to use.

The Texas sting-heat is a rattlesnake
And turns men into epics,
Drying their roots into dust
And clotting them, finally, into ash.