More on: tension

I. The TAXI DRIVER stopped and gestured to the empty desert. “There.” I saw nothing. “Where?” “There.” Now I saw, or thought I saw, some irregularity in the distance, about a mile away—the reflection of standing water, or maybe the attenuated shadow of a dip in the ground. After I paid the man, he sped…

What but poverty earned him your respect that when our fates were turned he is called to act as cruelly as I did then? Lot’s wife turned back in shock, in pity perhaps, and for this she was robbed of flesh and name. Why plant in us the startle and curious glance to countermand that…

Someone pulls a burning splinter from the devil’s thigh ————————————————& holds it up to the sun— August in Texas. And slides it down the frets to get the dying cicadas going, half wheeze & half-halted gospel hum, if it’s Blind Willie a hundred years ago, Blind Pilgrim born a stone’s throw from here, if it’s…