Queers on the Oregon Trail

to Oregon I’m relentless:
on holidays I pull at your
shawl and beg you to play

settler as the men down-
stairs pray for our souls
long before we understand
what it means to be queers. 

even the room is magic:
austere, New England white,
snow-lined sill mapping 

the cylinder glass window
that moans with the sneezing
attic door we pretend is
haunted by the first pioneers. 

even the quiet

before the old, angry Compaq
drops us on the high plains,
where we’ll purchase two 

oxen to drive West toward
the Columbia: pray we
live long enough to see
                          the other side.