Mineral Rights

POEM | Chera Hammons

Mineral Rights

After about two hours of driving south on Highway 287, fields of pumpjacks, cow-pastures full of them, sway their slim hips slightly off-beat of each other, pulling oil out of the well, tedious in their dumb horsey faces. Long-snouted horseflies suck sticky dark wet from the shallowest cow places they can get to, bend of shoulder or hock. Their stomachs are chalices where the animals marry. The prairie drones with peace and insects, and no one stops to look at it. The joints start to orange so the machines creak steadily with rust for decades together, steady and heavy. A jackrabbit rests in the shadow of the neck of one, cool and still, lucky in the shade and used to its noise.