The prickly pear tea brought him back to Santa Fe — brought him back to her. It had been years since that week in the small adobe brick shack outside of town, nestled amongst the rolling dunes and the looming saguaros. How long ago had it been? Seven years? Ten years? He would have been a younger man then, just turned twenty-one and she, an older woman. She had seen decades of change in the city before he was even born. And still more before he had even stepped foot off the train into her strange land. She fascinated him — in the way she thought, in the way she spoke, in the way her strong-legged silhouette straddled him in the flicker of candlelight. He bowed to her gospel.…
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A face on its side caught mid-anguished scream, lying in the barren, arid dunes is a common symbol of decay. Ozymandian, they say. A touchstone. A callback. Look upon me and weep, I think.
****
Augustus Boyle, as I insist on calling him after the fact, insists that I join him on a quest. I’d dithered. I’d been down this road, in the desert on some journeyman shit before. I spent part of my twenties running in circles about the Geezer Bandit before doing heavy journalism on sandwiches. Now, in my own This American Life-sort of way, a story has come to me, and I don’t want to offend it, but does anybody even want journalism anymore?
“It’s to bear witness,” he says. The first time he says it through an encrypted message on a private server.…
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I drip paint on the neighbor’s lilies
from the balcony above,
pluck leaves from branches
parked next to my house.
I throw them off
as peace offerings. The flowers cry—
milky,
stained.
At night,
I push a glass of water
off the ledge. It shatters
over daisies. Their lights
flicker. The dog
barks. They say, “It must’ve been
a chipmunk.”
– Rebecca Ferlotti
Note: This piece was originally published in Wingless Dreamer (2021)…
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my country tis of thee—
invade women’s bodies
deport non-white people
beat up leftist voices
my country tis of thee—
no food for the poor
no meds for the poor
no homes for the poor
my country tis of thee—
cut down the trees
poison the water
pollute the air
my country tis of thee—
sweet land
of tyranny
for thee i grieve
– Ron Torrence…
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Stanley was driving fast enough to beat the minutes, checking off mile marker after mile marker, hurtling over the rivers and through the woods in his mad dash to get up there before the warden departed, the pizzas breathing in Stanley’s back seat, heater vents wheezing to keep them warm, buckled in to keep them from sliding and spilling downwards, toppling onto the chassis floor, hungry pies made of God knows what, corporate-certified The Works©, masses of fatty meat and regimented veggie shards, scattered across prefabricated crusts, smothered in low-grade salt-ridden bulk-manufactured warehoused tasteless cheese, which All-American Pizza© delivered daily by the truckload to All-American Pizza Courts© scattered across America like plastic houses on a Monopoly© gameboard, yet still, despite their All-American mediocrity, their aroma, warm and savory, strapped in place in Stanley’s back seat, locked up with him alone at the helm in the confines of his lonely dashing car, provided Christmas hope, for indeed it was Christmas Eve, and despite all the red tape the warden had wrapped around it, finally, to Stanley’s surprise, miracle of miracles, the warden granted permission for Stanley to cut through it all and purchase the pizzas for one last gathering of his Correctional Education class, just like in the outside world, a pizza party on the last day of class.…
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All night long I’ve been cruising the dimly lit streets of West Philly. Nearing the sunup, I stop a mother and son up over the dumpsters at 8th and Wolf, their faces bathed in the red-blue lights of the police car. She demands to know what it’s that gave her away but my eyes are fixed on this tendril of ivy slithering across the pavement just behind her son, sprawling toward where the sun spills its early taupe over the low-slung buildings. My stepdad and I used to weed out the ivy festooning all over the side of our house, inching closer toward the front porch every day, every minute, determined, diligent as if out on a secret mission. That was the house I was born in and soon had to get evicted from after the cops took Mom away for her daily consumption of meth and crack and everything else in between.…
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Time isn’t patient. It isn’t kind.
I thought a lot about how to open this story. I needed some sort of beautifully poetic anecdote to show how she haunts me and will continue to until I die. But the truth is that she finds me in every moment. In every dance performance, every song, every reflection, she sits on my shoulders like a perched raven.
Though I want to tell you this story, I myself am still piecing it together.
But I’ll try. Everyday I try to make sense out of something that is impossible to understand.
My oldest sister lives in Seattle. She’s an artist and a writer. At least that’s what I tell people when they ask how many siblings I have. It’s easier that way.…
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