Western
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Cold Horse
Dispatch from Idaho: There’s a horse who stands in a field out in the country by where I live. A place surrounded by fields of comatose sugar beets and hard earth; a permafrost, an Icelandic bandage holding back the blood, keeping check on the broken hearted, keeping them cold and unsafe when the locks break… Continue reading
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Red Toast
Red toast and tequila in a dust storm on the far reaches of some blown out city in the desolate west. Liplock, Tejas. The land of dirt and death. Treeless scrapes and scars. Pitchforks, boredom. Hot houses and hay fires. HP butterheads play Roman soldiers. The sun is relentless. The decay is precious and accepted.… Continue reading
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The Abandoned Mannequin
Our lives all tangled in a fishing net of anxiety. And then she’s lovely to hold. Warm wife. Oblong life. Woke up like lonely Hulk today, thumbing for a ride on the avenue of broken dreams, smashing through a brick wall in an abandoned town on the edge of the desert. Scattered bricks like broken… Continue reading
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Lonely Motel
Doesn’t that look lonely That orange, muddled horizon Two cars at the Americana Motel The yellow brick and brown doors Square, curtained windows A jagged neon sign Black circles and yellow arrows A lonely smear of bruised sky One that makes the heart swell And the soul inflate Broken people crawl inside Weary travelers on… Continue reading
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Rural West Texas
Rural West Texas. Flat. Brown. Isolation. Lost dreams. Ragged old motels. Dirty convenience stores with the lingering scent of unruly humans. Fast-food restaurants with a glaze of stickiness one cannot wipe away. A restroom door that will not lock. Someone has to stand guard. High school football stadiums are the apex of architecture here. Looking… Continue reading
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A Boxer In the Dark of the Car
There’s something about lemonade in the summer that just hits me. Like right now, I can see the glass pitcher with the lemony yellow liquid inside. Someone is stirring it with a spoon. A glass full of ice cubes sits on the counter. Someone picks up the pitcher and pours the lemonade in the glass.… Continue reading
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An Amorikan Prayer
In a town called Shithole, Wyoming Where all good dreams skid, crash, and die The interstate exhaust hangs thick in the air And the cackles of the unloving haunt lonely hotel halls and rooms Where the color of the walls is warm wounded gauze and infection And the static of poor reception beckons the blessing… Continue reading
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The Orange Motel
It was somewhere between Q-Town and the LA basin of all that glitters and orange grove cathedrals that there came the great snow and I was forced to shut down in some Arizona town— I was in between lives, feverishly dodging the corruption of compassion that come raining down all over the world like a… Continue reading
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Roswell 1969
The low machine hum of the big, big city is entrenched in gaslight dawn. The birds and the killers are mum, waiting for the razor light of god’s heart to percolate and breed as the handmade souls rise, wash and run. And it was a hot day in the desert, a blowtorch sky was blowing… Continue reading
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The Cowmen (Three)
Inside the Camaro Saloon, Arno got caught up in an uneasy game of poker with a scroungy bunch of other cowmen. He sat at the round table topped with worn, green felt and a pile of chips in the center of it. His back was to the window, the scurrying of the mud street behind… Continue reading
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