Praise for Wyatt Earp in Dallas: 1963

“Using the cowboy iconography of Wyatt Earp to interpret and understand the Kennedy assassination, Steve McCabe has constructed the fascinating Wyatt Earp in Dallas: 1963.  Ambitious in its undertaking, but very accessible in its language, this long poem and drawings explore the stories of Earp and Kennedy through real and surreal images and oddball characters.  From the divine Miss Dove to an outlaw named Noah complete with a figurative Ark, McCabe careens between myths and times to redefine the action hero and, ultimately, manhood itself.”

• Molly Peacock, President, Poetry Society of America

Wyatt Earp in Dallas: 1963 [Part 1: Jailhouse Prophecy] Page 9

Wyatt the man
singing, his cell door slamming,
these jailhouse keys are not gonna rust
song;
looks on his sleeping trance prisoner –
perplexed beyond belief.
Beyond the edges of town.
Beyond the black sky studded
with misfired diamonds.

He listens the way he listened
as a little polka dot;
the prisoner’s breath a harmonica’s farewell.
It’s last note, before a clean hoof
steps into the shit
of civilization.

Wyatt bends over the whispering prisoner,
listens with the dawn of time
rhinoceros lids;
slides into the swamps of Eden,
around the corner
from Lady Luck’s all night saloon.

Wyatt Earp in Dallas: 1963 [Part 1: Jailhouse Prophecy] Pages 18-19:

“Wake up Wyatt.
The crystal river calls you.”

“Jenkins – perhaps you hear a turtle diving.”

“No Wyatt. These silver fish are for you.”
Words leap from the prisoners mouth:

In twilight on the compound
a slippery eel is bagged.
He wears a concrete halo
under a burning flag.

The makers of his sentence
swallow powder burning hot
they pay the good judge Warrant
to say what is is not.

The eel is wriggling backwards
To the alley’s hanging tree.
Away from horseless carriages
and a prince named Kenth of Dree.

Shots ring out – the Clanton gang
with friends who wear the star
have rained down poison bullets
on to his rolling car.

Powder explodes, Kenth of Dree
is struck both front and side
disciples of the blister
scatter bent with pride –

A marshall named Quiet Earth
reappears from the grave
spectral, though he knows the law.
The prince should have been saved.

We adhere to a widow’s grief
inside the mother cord box.
the eel is bald – no one to help
bit by a ruby fox.

Kenth of Dree mortally shot
By men who hate this earth.
His being swallowed up.
Hell has given birth.

Marshall Earth haunts the grass
where dirty deals were done.
Collecting scraps of evidence
while elsewhere lies are spun.

Wyatt Earp in Dallas: 1963 [Part 2: November] Pages 57 - 59

The smell of wet wood
drove him crazy.
The interior of the ark
sweated like grapefruit.
He accepted that his payment for construction
was survival.

Noah was feeling rather foul
passing over Dallas at noon.
The motorcade caught his eye.
He’d seen many parades,
Most notably a sarcastic festival
bidding him adieu
as the rains began.

Simultaneous
puffs of smoke
erupting beneath him
alerted him to danger.
He’d put out one fire already.

The widow wearing brain
crawled to flickering matter.
As if a miracle
the car picked up speed
after the final volley.

Wyatt Earp appeared from deep space
holding a smoldering flag.
Noah opened a hatch
And dumped out a bale of straw.
It fell like hair,
Breaking apart over Dallas.
Sirens wailed/
a thousand faces felt smooth as sand
to the blind widow.
Her fingers searched for his head.
Straw covered her
Falling into the limousine
speeding for the hospital.

As a lawman
Wyatt knew
not to follow the straw.
You look for the guy with the gun.
You follow him to his cheap hotel.
You watch him pack his bag.
You see him climb onto the stage
paying with thirty silver pieces
wrapped in a burning flag.

Wyatt twisted dials on a jammed radio.

“Deputize me dammit,” muttered Noah.
He paced starboard.
Let this sea fall to the ground
lashing the lips
of those drowned
at police headquarters.
“For forty days I have been here
each day a thousand years.
I exist only in the memory of my race.”
Noah dropped an anchor.

Wyatt Earp in Dallas: 1963 [Part 3: Author’s Note] Page 77

I held the flag while
mother and I stood on the hill.
Father disappeared to buy film.
A shadow
darkened our faces,
tilted skywards
bullets hit the Ark,
splintering wood.
“Look Mother, the President is dead.”