I.
In the office politics of the American West
you have to hate someone you don’t know.
I’d like to say Emma burns down Vienna’s saloon
because she loves her and can’t admit it,
but that’s not the case. They love the same thing.
Not the Dancing Kid, but power, success.
Each will find it her own way.
That’s why they hate each other.
II.
Emma is more man than woman.
She makes other ranchers
feel like less than men.
When she tortures a confession
out of an innocent boy,
they back her up
like a church choir.
“Young Goodman Brown”
meets fifties Western kitsch.
After Vienna kills her,
they punch their timecards
like workers on the clock.
III.
Everything here is as it seems.
The abandoned mineshaft under the saloon
that Johnny Guitar and Vienna
use to escape
is known to all. Even the Dancing Kid’s hideout,
which he reaches
by passing through a waterfall,
is at the top of a hill, in plain sight.
Before the railroad comes to this desert,
as in any work place,
no one doubts the truth
of what we don’t talk about.
IV.
You’d think once the ranchers learn
that Vienna’s hired hand
is really a sharpshooter
they’d give him some space.
Instead they set him up,
they throw him under the bus, I mean,
they stab him in the back.
Ignoring the muscular strength
of his neck shaft, they issue an ultimatum.
Get out in twenty-four hours.
Just long enough for two seasoned professionals,
Crawford and Hayden,
to ignore their childish coworkers
and flirt like mature adults.
V.
I held up no stagecoach.
I robbed no bank.
Why do you come here?
I knew you would. But why?
I know, and I know you know,
I’m innocent.
That’s why I sit here in my spotless white gown,
playing my spinet piano. It’s my job.
For the last half of the movie,
my saloon will burn on Main Street
my story heaped upon it
with everyone’s before me
who was sacrificed for greed.
Let the others reap the benefits.
I gave up the Dancing’ Kid
a long time ago. I like being by myself.
I’ll unroll the moment like a carpet,
I will furnish it like a home
.
James Cihlar is the author of the poetry book Undoing (Little Pear Press) and chapbook Metaphysical Bailout (Pudding House Press), and his poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Mary, Rhino, Painted Bride Quarterly, Emprise Review, Verse Daily, and Forklift, Ohio. The Book Review Editor for American Poetry Journal and the Poetry Editor for Referential Magazine, he lives in St. Paul, Minnesota
