Kristin Robertson
He buys a tractor, sap-green
and bright as a poisonous frog,
and mows football fields
behind local schools,
eats his lunch on bleachers.
Pimentos out of the jar.
Never a jazz cat or catcaller,
he claps for the pep girls,
the majorettes, their batons
like deadfall. Before he won,
he lived for chainsaws.
Woodchips like atmosphere,
ticker tape or snow. Now
he buys ticker tape and snow
at the ticker tape store,
at the snow store. Still
he breathes in the rows
he's cut, the thirty yard lines.
Gas-soaked grass acrid
as the armpit of the frog,
the frog alive and wondrous
and full of poison and alone.