Читать книгу The Lease - Mathew Henderson - Страница 8

Across the field you can see a farm girl who might be pretty,

stripped down and out of her father’s coveralls.

Might get you hard if she wasn’t hidden so well.

Kinda gets you hard anyway, as she climbs the tractor,

her legs bouncing against the sides of her loose rubber boots.

Remember where you came from? What the girls were like there?

Now open the fucking well and walk the pipe like a healer,

your ungloved palm hovering over the unions.

She’s in the tractor now, over there, radio on,

windows cracked, texting a guy from school while you hit

the first sandoff of the day – ball frack, zone two,

and Bill tells you, Right now, down below, there’s enough nitrogen,

sand and shit to shoot one of those fat fuck thousand-pounders

from TV right the fuck out of his bed, so open that bastard slow.

And then, Nevermind, and he does it himself.

The thin pipe rattles, your lightest pipe, the stuff you solo

around the lease on your shoulder. The whole line kicks

and, standing beside the flowback tank, the noise is older

than anything you’ve ever heard, like you’ve always been hearing it,

and just now became aware. The first time you drove a car

the engine kicked, sounded like a coil cleanout,

a blowdown, a frack, a bleedoff. When you learned to

knead dough, your father’s palms over your hands,

there was a man outside punching holes in the earth,

making your mother’s windows buzz and rattle.

Does the farm girl hear this, over there,

in the tractor cab? Does she know it’s you?

Near the end where the steel turns ninety degrees,

goes straight up, some burr inside catches, peels off,

and the sand cuts through the pipe and into the air.

But your hands, they’re already in an X above your head,

when you remember the sign for shut the fucking well.