Thursday’s Poem – This cow eats cash

This cow eats cash

We couldn’t figure out our phone bill.
long distance calls remained unclaimed every month.
No one would say, “That was mine.”
And just pay for it,
like a man

So one night
when we were all sitting around
arguing about how to pay the fucking phone bill,
I picked up the phone,
looked up one of the numbers that showed up three or four times last month
and dialed it.

I asked the woman who answered if she knew anyone in Flagstaff.

She said yes, her nephew lived there.

I handed him the phone and told him someone wanted to talk to him.

I don’t think he much liked me after that.

When he shot his elk he made sure I never got a taste. I heard him say something to that effect once, some game he was playing. But when I walked in the room and asked him about it he brushed it off like I had been mistaken.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that was ok. I needed him to pay his bills, not feed me elk meat.

This cow eats cash.