The Bambi Conspiracy

At some point the cowboy seated at the bar squares on me,
knots his hand into my shirt, pulls me to his chin.
“See, we didn’t actually land on the moon,” he grunts.
“Was all fabricated on a movie set,
like Bambi.”
I protest, “But Bambi is a cartoon and—“
The cowboy shushes me, buys me a shot of Jack.
“The government is capable of anything.”

By four in the morning the moon has ditched
And we are hunkered inside the cowboy’s tumbledown
hideaway deep in some avocado-skinned mountains.
He’s stocked with rifles and pickled beets and Polartec gear
and a new computer with lighting Internet connections.
He crashes through websites, pulls from a bottle of gin,
narrating:
“Killed by the ATF...Abducted by aliens...Culture war...
Mud people...Elvis, alive and pumping gas in Utah.”

“Tell me you didn’t vote for Clinton,” he says,
and cuffs me when I fail to answer.
“A commi-pinko! Clinton—born Vladimir Stan-ko-nov
in Moscow—smuggled into Arkansas two days later.”
I speak up: “But his mother—“
”A man,” barks the cowboy.
“Same as Barbara Bush and Cher.”

Then something sets off the cowboy.
He springs toward a rifle,
barges out the door, whams twice into a black line of firs.
He pauses. Fires again. Slinks inside. Slams the door.
“You can’t be too careful,” he pants.
“I knew something was up first time I saw Michael Jackson.”

--Mitchell Hegman