The #2 in Santa Fe

Here is where the dust settles
the sighs escape
the shoulders droop.
Here, everyone knows
everyone, knows everyone's
business. Which is alcohol,
the woman wearing dusty beads
who unwraps stories like cheap toys
and holds them up in the dark to see,
or the one who takes them, shakes them
like a piggy bank, and laughs
when they are empty?
A man professes his will to teach
someday, that he will teach
a lesson longer than this line,
and one that doesn't end
where it began.
Sage fool, I think.

Here is where words dissipate.
I hear a man
who speaks a dream
will watch it fade
into the fumes. Push it
forward, slur it
down, lurch it
back.