I am four and riding my Shetland Pony,
Sissy, and my father is riding Zephr, 
his Arabian, who leads the July 4th
parade every year and races fast
around the barrels and chasing
the calves my father hog ties
in record time at the rodeo.
Today Zephr plods along the road.

Where do you want to ride today?
my father asks, unusually jovial.
Past the blue house, I say. 
Instead, he leads us past 
the green house with the Bay
and Palomino in the pasture.

Both run to the fence and neigh
and Sissy scared and startled
by the sight of strange horses
bucks like a bronc in the rodeo,
tossing me in the air and I land
on the road on my left side. 

My father orders me to get up
but I can’t. Hot pain shoots
through my arm and leg.
I hear tires squeal, a car door
slam and my mother shouting, 
You’re drunk. What did you do?
She’s fine, Just get up, he says.
Then I hear Aunt Babs voice,
of reason. Don’t move her. 
Her arm and leg look broken. 

Mother rides with me in the ambulance
and stays with me as I lay in a hospital 
bed for what seems like forever 
with my left leg in traction and my left arm
in a plaster cast which my grandparents,
aunts, uncles, cousins and neighborhood
kids all sign, as they crowd in the room.
The only person missing is my father.

He’s away on a trip, my mother 
says. He’s on a bender, the coward.
my grandmother mumbles.
He can’t face what he did. I worry
about my father. It wasn’t his fault,
I say.  He’s color blind. 

I never sit in a saddle again.
I wish I could say it scares 
my father sober but it doesn’t.
He drinks booze until at 65
a judge says: Get Sober
or go to jail. He never drinks again.
                        

That hen is the best layer in the house,
his father tells my husband when he
is four and points to the big fat
brown hen as they gather eggs.

The child hears: biggest liar
and interprets his father to mean
it is his job as the firstborn to teach
the naughty chicken a lesson. 

After supper, he sneaks out and snatches
the hen, takes her to the chopping block
and grabs the ax and chops off her head
just like he watched his father do.

He is so proud of his handiwork
that as soon as the deed is done,
he takes his parents outside and points
to the headless corpse and bloody

head with dead eyes wide open
thinking he will get hugs and ice cream 
for a bedtime snack and is shocked
by the silence and then the shouting.

Do you know what you’ve done?
his father yells in his face.
Of course, he doesn’t, his mother says.
You let him watch you butcher chickens.

His mother is quiet as she plucks
the feathers and boils the hen
for hours and then makes dumplings
and gravy and glares when he says mmmm.

He’s not sure why he is being banned
from the hen house but he’s happy
because he doesn’t like to be pecked
on his hands when he hunts for eggs.
                        

A middle-aged Cinderella
in a cowgirl hat and boots
and chickens in cages

squawking from the backseat
of her SUV pulling mustangs
in a horse trailer, Cassandra

rides onto the desert land
ruled by cows and coyotes
for centuries and her first order

of business is to get rid 
of the cows and coyotes,
she announces to us,

who have lived in a house
with a waterfalls/pond
at Elephant Butte for two decades.

Cowpies are unsanitary.
Coyotes will kill my chickens,
she tells my husband

as she demands he shut
down our pond watering
wildlife and range cows.

No watering deer, birds,
Etc. No animals you don’t
own, the Fraulein Hitler

declares in the cease and desist
order she nails on our door
and when we don’t comply

she pounds on our doors
and windows and peeks
through our blinds.

My husband sends Cassandra
a letter by certified mail
accusing her of trespassing

and harassment. We’ll sue,
he threatens if she doesn’t get
her horse trailer and corral

off our property line. A blue
shed and five barking dogs
tied to trees and trailers

appear on the property line
and as she sits on the fence
we wait inside barricaded

behind clay walls for the first
shot to be fired like Randy
Weaver at Ruby Ridge.