Soil under the fingernails and
raised on sallet and poached whitetails he
dropped out of school to work a farm and
always knows how to spin a yarn when
talking his way out of this’n, or into that’n he
goes by Joe to some, Mr. Grayson to the sheriff and
his lady’s every man’s; he’s every woman’s;
they don’t know what love is when they’re drowning in it and
it’s bad luck, all of it,
misery resting where poverty beds,
if they were born with money we’d see
them staring back at us, glossy and clean
from the cover of some magazine.