She stands timid in her spotlight

swaddled by her silk wrap and Roy Rogers

a South-Asian born-again cowboy

normally the prompt of joking fodder

but with her first note that joke

will not be told tonight,

not from her frontier saloon-girl lips

not by her scowling pioneer-woman smile

pushing forth the covered wagon horses

in an emerald sari and ten-gallon hat,

a suddenly Bollywood Gene Autry

has made me a nine-year-old cowpoke again

riding my grandpa’s knee through Nebraska

while the deer and the antelope play

in the empty streets outside the Englewood Starbucks

where she sings and for three minutes

no one thinks “9-11” erroneously

we all just huddle in her covered wagon

driving westward through Apache plains

fording chest-deep silted rivers for love of America,

manifest destiny erupts from her buckshot musket mouth

as Annie Oakley tips her worn-down hat

to the brown girl with the jewel-tone sandals

and the dream she forgot to leave in New Delhi.