You Will Want Like Cowboys


I will want like splinters,
astonished spit, also like alphabets and minnows.

You will want at smallness,
also squirreling across the wire.

Wantings in the wilderness!
What did you think,

words?
You've seen it all before.

That's my last duchess—
all I want I've learned from her.

I want all I've learned from her.
Like Goya and church

you will fever like derangement.
You will lick no less

the ecstatic, and you will grow no more
accustomed to this dirty purse

than I to breathlessness
or pavement.

There is Kansas in the wilderness.
There is not cloudy.

All day the fingering, there your gaze,
there I will saddle up

the pillow, buckle, bobbin, tongue
I wanted from.

-Anne Boyer (Coconut)

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