Sonnet 29: The Wonders of Albuquerque

There is a statue of a lumberjack looming over the corner

of Louisiana Boulevard and Central Avenue. Nearby

they keep all sorts of horses in stalls and at least one of

the ranch hands is busy trimming Make Me Rich Lefty's

front hooves while dreaming of the day the state fair will return.

Men wearing imperial cowpoke hats festooned with feathers

and women in colonially appropriated squash blossom

jewelry rattle 'round upstairs. Their jingle and jangle is golden

or at least made from a mixture of internet-generated electronic

data and plutonium. You can get a hot dog wrapped in bacon

from the cart parked on a drought-damaged cacti garden

by the front gate. The scene was littered with lottery tickets

and elm seeds until the day-crew arrived with thorn-resistant

gloves, heavy metal music blaring from la troca.

- Rudolfo Carrillo

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The Colonist, Day 17803

So far, the weekend has been decent. 

The sun is visible in these here parts; now it comes into view earlier and earlier with light from yonder star filtered into invigorating shades of vermilion and other colors that have citrus analogs but begin transmuting into purples and blues once the fiery orb is aloft over the city.

I counted thirty Inca doves roosting on the dead apple tree in the backyard. I'll be good and goddamned if the tree comes back this time. The cold snap two winters back conquered it, mostly. There was one live branch left over, but I reckon those cold early-January mornings did the rest. The birds like it fine as it is, but all of them, in a grey flock like that, make the dogs bark unreasonably.

After watching them flutter and gambol like feathery hands, and when the hounds were done with nature and I with the winter light, we all retired to the atomic stove by the window. It popped a couple of times during the ignition sequence, but otherwise came on just as expected. We were all warm and I drank a mild stimulant beverage common among the planetary stewards of the era. The other animals et processed meat, by the way.

The computer was still on from last night.

For one thing, it glows. For another, it has some sort of tunnel in it. The tunnel connects to a library and information center that is like a circus, but infinite, if you get my drift. You view it all through a glass screen.

There was some snow in the mountains, for instance, but not enough to ameliorate the rage of drought that now follows the yearly solar ascent. It is possible to cross most of the rivers here by walking through them, I thought.

Just then, a woman with a neck tattoo of an eagle, the words "La Perrona" drawn in black ink above the crudely drawn predator, knocked on the door. So, I detuned the nuclear heat approximator, rose and said, who is there, as I spied her, from out the velvet-curtained window.

Well, she goes on about how she is my neighbor from four doors away, and I yell through the door that I know better because I have an electronic tube that sends me information and have heard all about the burglars and cretins combing the southeast heights. They are looking for easy prey.

You have to let them inside for crazy, unforeseen, and potentially life-threatening scenarios to arise says I to the dogs who are going crazy. One of them is biting the door knob like it is a ten pound pork chop.

After a fashion, the inky interloper crawls back to her car and it chugs off, missing on a cylinder and leaving a half-pint of dirty oil on my driveway.

I wander over to the glass screen, say hello and start reading about how two visions of public education are currently at odds and being debated by a legislative body that meets sixty miles north of here, where they still get snow once in a while.

Before you knew what happened exactly, except that it must involve celestial mechanics, it is dark again and so I sit down and type this out to let you know how my stay in your city, on your block, in your town, in your state, and ultimately on your planet, is going, more or less.

Like I said at the start, so far the weekend has been decent.

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The Next World is Here

by Rudolfo Carrillo

If I was standing in front of mi chante, in the midst of the infinitely repeated and truncated nights this season and the next generate as a matter of natural processes - which I ain't - then I'd more than likely hurl this sorta conversational discourse into air with my tongue, just so I could watch it sparkle and move around in a million directions.

Maybe those vocalized thoughts would climb through the hot, dry wind that has come to distinguish this place, carrying the lot into space, chariot-like and roaring.  There'd be vowels bouncing off satellites and hooking up with this or that noun just for the sake of meaning and the promotion of order against the backdrop of a yawning void that goes on and on forever.

It could turn out that a sentient liquid on venus or a robot investigating the dust clouds of the andromeda galaxy would receive my howling transmission someday, come to believe they have a decent, if abstract, grasp on what the hell was going on amongst the momentarily beautiful bundles of flesh, electricity, and smoke-like souls that crawl and walk and wander through Burque.

I'd look up into the sky and pick out a familiar star or constellation; I'd speak to the dead like they were alive and happily dangling their wings angel-like off of the edges of a billion earth-covering clouds.

This is what I did between the horns of the day, but just some of it, I'd tell all those entities briefly described in the previous paragraphs of this transcription.

It still hasn't rained and even the weeds are getting brown, so I gave up on pulling them out of the garden. I figured they'd appreciate the gesture; maybe the monsoon would get here in time and they'd get to flower one more time.

After contemplating the implications of that command decision, I drove down to the student ghetto for chinese takeaway. They have a great lunch special at Kai's. I waited in the dining room and eavesdropped on two young blonde women. One of them had a tattoo of fancy letters on her right foot. The other had a pair of big white plastic sunglasses perched on her head, sorta like an ersatz alabaster temple to blindness setting upon an impossible flaxen sea.

They talked about infections caused by jacuzzi water and how they were both anxious yet intrigued about going to a cocaine and booze party. They seemed mostly flummoxed and laughed nervously. The one with the painted foot said you'll like the buzz but the other figured those sorts of activities encouraged infidelity and unexpected trips to the student health center. The hostess brought out the takeaway and I hobbled out of there just as the conversation turned to the subject of body hair.

When I got back to the car I noticed plenty of parking on Harvard Street. The asphalt lined corridor there, between Central and Silver was quiet except for a coffee house down the street, where all sorts of humans were drinking caffeinated beverages and carrying on like it was already summer. One fellow was juggling, tossing bright red spheres around and around while a dog wearing a blue bandana barked and jumped, turning circles around the man.

A pair of bearded dudes, dressed for Seattle or Portland, in flannel shirts and leather shoes, were playing a game of chess; one of them grabbed at the hound's tail as it spun past. A young couple gamboled out the front door, tossed their sandals into the street spontaneously and, with synchronous smiles flaring sunward, began dancing.

On the way home, I tuned the radio to a baseball game broadcast. The home team was winning.

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Things in Light Podcast #15: Black Forest Mix

Things in Light's fifteenth podcast, Black Forest Mix, features recordings by Drought, Streights, Harbors, Roñoso, Tenderizor, Leeches of Lore, Great White Buffalo, and Dread. See the full track listing below.

TiL #15: Black Forest Mix from ϟ▲ϻ▲и✝ђ▲ ▲ииɇ on 8tracks.

1. Drought - Nightwalker
2. Streights - Glitter Forest/ Cognitive Failure
3. Harbors - Recessive Departure
4. Roñoso - Furry Toes Aflame
5. Tenderizor - Hellucination
6. Leeches of Lore - Macrochelys Temminckii
7. Great White Buffalo - Four
8. Dread - Slay the Kings

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