The Mailbox

This white-dust road is in for an evil storm today.
The wind seems up to something by the casual way
it whistles by. Here, sixteen miles from anywhere,
a weedy mailbox waits, mounted on an auger,
a spiral blade ripped from a combine harvester.
This hard twist of American DNA,
caduceus-like, has cured some beery boy’s addiction
to knocking down the mailbox in his black S10.
The flag is a red ear against the head’s bright white
and the door a hound dog’s tongue hung out.
The letters of a letter crawl to life and bite,
blackwidowing the hand that reaches in.