Megan Mealor lives and writes in Jacksonville, Florida.

Dude Ranch Dues
By Megan Mealor

We corresponded cowpuncher chaquetas
dogging each other on savanna Steeldusts
indefinable amid furrowed bluebonnets
longhorns clashing limestone looms
the talismanic Texas half-light minting
live springs hutting hounded doves

Fitful cedar fences, uncoupled chuckwagons
harvested gangrenous hacienda hutches
forging beetled bygone byres
silhouettes of rough-stock rodeos
raddled Rio Grande steer-roping roots
harnessed hills humming with dragonheads

Mexican Hats waged war on white-tails
Prairie-Fire wrangled coast pipe corrals
Cowpen Daisies scandalized severed soil
Brown-Eyed Susans haunted railroad residue
Crow-Poison colonized fluted waysides
Garden Rockets seduced the limoncello sky