Huckleberry Burgers

I’m at my aunt dolores' trailer in Montana where the walls are covered with horses

I count twelve 

some jump over barrels of hay

some are silouhettes on a mountain range

in the bathroom the soap dispenser is a ceramic horse

with goofy teeth and cartoon eyes

she just got back from Washington where 

she tells me it’s blackberry season

here 

they have a gas station that sells huckleberry burgers

she likes huckleberries 

but she says blackberries make a better pie

she doesn’t have a horse of her own

she has a cat named shadow

who leaps through the window and she screams every time  

outside there’s a saint bernard tied to a pole 

howls like an angry wife every time a stranger drives by

she tells me there’s a man in her life 

he’s an ugly brute with a golden tooth

tasting pine trees and taking swings 

hopping greyhounds and sweating steam 

getting drunk to the sound of the t.v. 

fishermen’s manners 

but he’s a steady pulse of heat. 

she says, 

“I get confused and start looking for love in all the wrong places. In between the cushions of seats. God help me if I’ve settled for spare change. I feel so lost I wish I could make like smoke and float up easy into that basin of everything that’s left."

Dolores whispers now, 

"He doesn’t see me much anymore. Sometimes he comes over late, the saint bernard howls while I let him hold me. Me like a dense forest of trees coming up out of the reeds, leaves the shape of water lilies. "