#41 Iron&Wine Chronicles: Bird Stealing Bread

The boy moves in the dark. Quick at first, then almost imperceptive once he reaches the dumpster. The red eye of a wall-mounted camera blinks. He waits, listens, and vaults over the wall, landing among the trash. He squats still and listening. All clear. So he rips into the big black trashbags, quiet as a bird.

Two nights ago he found half a dozen quarter-pounders and a basketfull of fries. Still warm. That was a good night. They ate like kings beneath the overpass, each passing around a tallboy of rotgut beer. One kid raised the can and proposed a toast. –To Bird! Somehow seems to always bring the feast. But how about some ketchup next time? All laughed in the shadows.

Last night he made noise and barely got out unseen and emptyhanded. Tonight there is nothing but a few packages of expired buns. At least they’ll eat something.

#40 Iron&Wine Chronicles: Lovesong of the Buzzard

The man crawls across the desert. Six days since the horse broke leg and tossed him in a dry ravine. The outpost was another six walking, and the canteen empty last Thursday, or so he guessed.

He hobbles, then stumbles, then crawls. A man aging forty years in half a week. The sun beats with infinite fuel, ceasing only for the night, when everything living comes and eats the only fool moving in the sand.

He had a map, but used it to clean his ass after tearing it up in frustration.

Now water was a word not formable with his mouth, dry as it was. Parched impossible to speak.  He reaches again, fingers spangled with dry cholla spines. His denimed legs tattered and ragged and all but gone.

A birdcall, then another. And more.  So he falls asleep, the lovesong of the buzzard barely registering in his crispy ears.

#39 A Conversation in Reno

You tattoo your failures on, on to your length of arm; they may run wrist to shoulderblade.

            -Matt Pryor

He sat at the table, a can of PBR in his right hand. –All this skin took years to finish. Crazy, man. I would have it lazered off but I like to keep it as a reminder.

            -Of what?

            He points to the arc and the great flood, the dove with branch, the three crosses atop Golgatha. –I keep it as a reminder of man’s penchant for belief in just about anything, no matter how terrible the consequences. I’m not sure it all happens like I was told.

            -Then what happens?

            He points to the pitbull staring out the window. –If I treated her like she was born bad and would never be goodnatured, guess what, she’d be one of those dogs you hear about on the news, eating kids and shit. Aggressive breeds? Look at her. I don’t think it’s the dog’s fault. Maybe the master is to blame.

-For AJ

#38 Socially Obese

He eats the same meal six times a day. Cooks them all on Sunday nights and packs them up in his freezer and fridge. 42 matching tupperwares stacked like airplane dinners. 4 ounces chicken breast. 4 ounces spinach. 1 gram salt. 1 gram pepper.

Pre and post workout shakes for Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. Days off consist of tanning and shopping for shirts cut low enough to show off his chest, and jeans cut wide enough to fit his thighs.

His colleagues at work call him The deTerminedator. But they don’t call him for beers on Friday night. Not anymore.

He says he’s doing this as much for himself as for some lucky lady, but when he does find a date he brings his own meals to the restaurant. He wonders why they all expect him to pick up the tab. He wonders why they never call him back. 

#37 The Run-On

He can never run far enough to make him feel like it’s time to turn around, like he’s free and his return is only optional, that he's choosing to come back by the same route or another untested and stand sweatsoaked and gasping at the frontsteps and feel like this is home, like the child inside is really his although he raised him as son since he was still on the tit and the little mulatto calls him daddy and looks at him like he doesn’t comprehend the man’s staggering whiteness contrasted against his own chestnut hue when they hold hands at the park or wait up for mommy who is working late again then coming in like a hurricane to breastfeed the new all-white baby who’s been screaming since she woke and the man now laces-up his sneakers and slips out for another run, maybe this time far enough.