She ran the goddam gamut, goddammit. Shit
She said. Fuck. Shit and fuck and you can’t even
Guess what. Up from the bench, pacing, not done yet.

Nothing above her but a granite eagle, spread eagle
Stone remnant of a real bird in a real war
Who screamed what some called encouragement but people

Like us know was fear, fear at the end of a tether.
Abusive, cathartic, dysphemistic, emphatic, idiomatic:
She put it to all its uses and more. On the bird’s feathered

Head the South laid a bounty. Laid. Head. Her fury
Subsides like a dying geyser. A blue gray haze
Blankets the courthouse yard and the river—

Passing—passes a fathomless span of damage.
To hope she leaves and doesn’t come back is to fail
The titty in entity, the savage in salvage, the rage.

The goddam feral shit she slung was real.
Like an eagle laid up in the rain, passing midnight
Above the last egg left to steal.