Southwest Duet

Robert Allen

February 12, 2023

                    on Progress II by Luis Jiménez

                          Blanton Museum of Art

Caught in the moment of their strongest

opposition, held fast by a length

of lariat, that single straight line

creates an illusion of support.

Both figures would collapse but for the

tension in this taut, tightening noose.

The stiff lean of the vaquero’s back

and earthbound track of his horse’s hooves

seem to balance the desperate leap

forward by the longhorn bull, whose twin

horntips whip up and around as if

puncturing the pale brush-country sky.

Below stand the stubborn juniper,

spiny ocotillo, blossoming

prickly pear, centipede, horned toad, rat.

Owl grasps jackrabbit in its talons,

wren stabs lizard, tarantula hawk

waits to sting the doomed tarantula.

Feathered spear lies broken, defeated

near the ghoulish skull a mouse calls home.

Is this progress? The artist says so.

Our future, he says, is big and bold

like legions of gleaming lowriders,

fueled by an Aztec fire from within

where letters grow more than nine feet tall,

words are cast in slick blue fiberglass,

and red neon lights dot every eye.

Robert Allen is retired and lives in San Antonio with his wife, two children, five antique clocks, and four cats. He has poems in Voices de la Luna, the 2023 Texas Poetry Calendar, and TPA. He loves cardio-boxing workouts, hates to throw things away, and facilitates Gemini Ink's in-person Open Writer's Lab.