My dad said, Son, that ain’t no kid
That’s a cocktail waitress in a Dolly Parton wig

If you think I won’t dance in that trashcan.
I’m getting in the trashcan.
The filth in my bones.
I’m dancing in the rot and gut of the bloodbath,
the eyeliner, the lipstick, the sticks I lip and eye.
I was taught to tongue the grim and scum.
To writhe for the one and other eye.
The highest spikes beneath my heel,
the most red slice between my legs.
To gash and heal, to rent the filth inside of me,
you will have to get in, too.

She's got her daddy's money, her mama's good looks
More laughs than a stack of comic books

(It is assumed that you have a mother and a father. You have a mother and a father, right? You know who your real mother and your real father are, right? You are not illegitimate, right? It is unattractive to be illegitimate. It is unattractive to not be attractive. Be attractive. Your mother should be attractive. Your mother should love you. Your father should be your real father, not a sperm donor or a European boy your mother met abroad. Your mother should not be a European or Asian girl who went to America who met an American boy. That’s not American!!!! That’s not country!!!! You should not be biracial. You are white. You are white. If you are country you should probably be white but if not we can work around it. Country is a mother and a father. Country is not a mother and a mother oh no country is not a father and a father oh no country is ONE THING: that you have a mother and a father that you were born in America that the mother and the father are both American that the baby was born from those two people doesn’t matter if they love each other if they are still together if they are divorced if they are poor well if they are poor that’s even MORE country!!!!!! Get your mother get your father get your shotgun get your girl body get your ducks in a row get your eggs in a basket get your eggs in your belly by belly we mean womb get your womb ready find a man to be the father you can be the mother you must be a mother so find a father a suitable father the child you make must have a mother and a father. Country is white straight attractive and

He just stole a kiss as he rode away
He never hung his hat up at Kitty’s place

Kitty is neither bandit nor heroine.
I am looking back at a man
looking back at a dream
looking back at the woman he didn’t choose to stick around for.
Women and their wilderness. Their lack.
And today the girls parade their wild wearing all the same clothes.
Wedge heels, stick legs wobbling.
Photographing and posting, riding the slow turtle of the self.
And TV shows them
and the Internet shows them
and the radio shows them
lots of pretty women.
We should’ve been cowboys.
We should’ve learned to ride something more veiny
than a keyboard, camera phone, credit card.
In the tight hot cells of our hearts
what we wanted wasn’t kiss and vow
but a way to shatter, then steer.

Kristin Sanders is a writer and teacher currently living in Nashville. She is the author of one chapbook, "Orthorexia," from dancing girl press, and is a poetry editor at the New Orleans Review. Additional country music poems can be found at H_NGM_N, Everyday Genius, Finery, and TENDERLOIN.