The Original Pabst Blue Ribbon

We were young and happy and grabbing

fistfuls of blueberries

from her old man’s bushes.

I kissed Pammy

full on the lips.

She pushed me away and sang:

Baby, I don’t want to know.
I don’t want to know how
you never loved me.
I don’t want to know –
oh no – I don’t.

In the morning,

the Mexican migrant families picked

their berries as they always did,

tight-lipped and sharp-eyed,

and I watched them from two rows away,

and I heard them singing, but

I didn't understand a single word.

I knew they sang to Jesus.

They sang to Cesar Chavez.

Pammy sang

the corridos of Muttsy Hugbars.

She sang of the left-hand poet, the last

bastard bard of Muskegon County Michigan,

the destined exile of the dirt road,

the half-assed landslide and dirtfall

poet of small hills and his flatland people—

the flatfoot folks who walked that road,

who picked those blueberries,

who sang those muddy songs.

She sang my song.

I had a plastic milk jug of dandelion wine.

I had a can of Pabst.

I wanted to know where

is the topic sentence

we heard John Fogerty sing,

that we heard Creedence sing.

We saw all the wattles of the old men,

she and I, we saw the fat

jowls of the men in their thirties,

those flabby fucks

who prowled the horse barn at the Ravenna Fair.

They skunked around the stalls

not looking at the ponies

the girls rode.

I want to be with you

is what she said to me.

Can you hear me holler,

she said, and no one

listened but me.

I want to be with you, she said.