Sweeter Voices Still. Группа авторов

likes calling me sweetie. Wibaux, Montana, a skip over the border, a place—Grandpa told me in childhood—where you could get married at sixteen. What’s the beer called? She looks up from washing glasses and I notice her eye is purple-yellow, Redheaded IPA. A redhead for a redhead, I say, and take another swig.

      Two’s enough and I push back my stool, pay my tab, thank the waitress. I push open the door and a sting of diesel hits my nose. I look up at the inky blackness above and wonder about the inky blackness deep below. Where is my home going, this land on fire—and I’m off the ground, flying, just like I always wanted to do when watching Mary Poppins. I hit the stone wall, hard, take a kneecap to the brow, hear a low fag ring in my ear. I reach for my glasses, not broken, somehow, and hear the roar of an engine, the smell of burnt rubber. It’s a white pickup, that’s all I know. A white pickup on an ocean of black oil.

      Boys and Oil first appeared in High Desert Journal.