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Taylor Graham |
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VISION You're tooling down Nevada Hwy 395 in and out of California not keeping track of state lines last casino/first casino sage- brush sand & juniper Nevada where anything could happen as the sun goes sliding down its golden glitter Vegas rising in the south and in the universal blinding desert where so many have found angels & enlightenment along the shoulder a man leads two pale horses: on the back of one, a speckled dog; on the second, a bird with folded wings. You're tooling fast. Already a couple of casinos behind you man and horses step gravely along the bottle-splintered shoulder of a desert where anything could happen and it's way too dark to see. HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS The house is full of people you don't know. Three or four (it's hard to count feet and elbows) are asleep on the couch, their clothing embraced at random on the floor. Come daylight they'll worry about the mating of shoes and socks. For now, the house breathes a diffuse snore, a massed warmth. Upstairs and down and in a droning bathroom are bodies without their morning faces. Outside, you stand under a filament of stars. It's a dead language in intricate calligraphy. You count each of your numb fingers; your breath palpable as flesh. Behind you heaves a continent dark as DNA. FACTS From the 10-speed crashed against a tree, broken eyeglasses and a blood spot on asphalt you can trace an imaginary dotted line northwest along the sidewalk to an off- season boarded-up bed and breakfast. Wind's unrelenting off the bay. A dotted line dances dead leaves in eddies, up a rough stone stairway to an untended lawn; a windowframe without a pane, a door nobody bothered to lock. Of course there's no one there. So you continue on, connecting invisible dots. You might be on the right track or not. At the end of that imagined line you imagine someone without a bicycle, and at least a human load of trouble. |