In the notes between the singing the hook dog sounds. It centers the silence. The shoulder that always means more. But the shoulder don’t know the mesas, and it don’t know the Wheel, or those lakes of leg gone bad. Little is left except the staccato crack of a branch man. The nests give off a subtle shade, of the missing echo, a daily engine and the old done dared. If the hook dog can even sense anymore where the scent went south it is unclear to anyone here. A drumming begins to edge in from the hotspots of the hills and quickly insinuates itself into the seams. Scrubbing will prove insufficient. In the memory of the people nothing can prepare them for these stalks of gypsum hanging like stunned ghosts from off the acacias. At night, strange exchanges float through the trees, and settle, with the children waiting there on some kind of notion, to get up, and finally go.
Jeffrey Little | The Portable Alone Contents | Mudlark No. 47 (2012)