1. |
Interstate
00:17
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2. |
Paris
01:39
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We spent New Year’s Eve
in Terre Haute—counting
down the hours
in a hotel room. They all drank
champagne and rang in the new year. I drove us across the
border to Paris—Illinois, a
small, sleeping town with no crepes or eiffel tower, only a taco bell
at which we stopped. We rang
in the new year once again in the
parking lot and I drove us back, singing something about my
first time in Illinois or how we never saw 12:45am
on the first of that year, and we held the moment
in our skin as the last
fizzles of fireworks descended into the cornfields.
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3. |
Gage
01:03
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Raced the freight train in Gage as it coughed on
to Fargo
as it coughed
coal smoke
Eventually the road branched away to the south and
it was gone
Pulled over
by a church
resting
on cracked
asphalt, a
brick building beside a gnome hat
and I realized
that I had imagined it all.
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4. |
Sequim
01:27
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Sequim is pronounced “skwim” and not like “sequin” as the locals told me. I traveled to Washington in
a rain coat but the sun shone through my window
of the Olympic View Inn that I booked solely so
I could sit by rainfall and write... for all six days.
On the last day of my visit I strayed
north to the Strait of Juan de Fuca where I sat
by a lighthouse and saw hues of blue and lilac,
finally feeling a single droplet of water on my cheek— formed by lacrimal, forming all week.
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5. |
Convoy
01:58
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On the ride across Ohio I slept
from Upper Sandusky to Van Wert
and awoke to dozens of tiny red light dots blinking in unison.
At the rest stop in Convoy I watched
in mesmerization and wondered
what they were.
Wind turbines a voice said
from the back seat and suddenly I saw
the spinning blades barely illuminated
in the spacious night.
They stopped just before the Indiana border
and as we crossed I watched them fade away
from the side view mirror
until the sun began to rise
and I slipped back into a tender rest.
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6. |
Buford
02:30
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Warmth in the air pools in lungs eventually seeping into the heart, extending to handshakes and smiles between strangers and hugs and love between friends.
I remember the cookouts
with the neighbors each night, the honeysuckle
by grandma’s pool and sucking out the honey until we were called inside for dinner. We snuck sugar cubes from her kitchen and gambled them off like poker players when we really just played Go Fish.
Though each day was a special type of warm the leaves
never changed, the green never faded to orange to brown to white. The friendly warmth never extended past white, and we were told never to pass the ivory fence or the world would get much darker.
One day on our way to church we drove past the fence
and I saw the sun still shining, steam rising from grills, children smiling and sucking the honey out of the honeysuckles.
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7. |
Springville
02:09
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I took a hymnal from an old church but when I see
a grave without flowers I go to the local florist and bring them back. The graveyard by Mitchell has a statue of Jesus and a bench to the left side—I find myself sitting on the ground to the right, even in post-Midwestern storm mud. My parents used to
beat me with the Bible Belt and shout at me to listen to God but how can I listen if I cannot hear over
their shouts? We have a book in our bathroom called How to Make Money Through the Grace of God and
I can’t seem to understand that concept. I sit by the church on a hill and write, about how I live in a place where I am not free to simply find myself on my own, where I am told that the only acceptable world is here: a place where judgement of sinners gets you to heaven and leaving for good is considered a sin.
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8. |
Ventana
01:05
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I made a home in the heart of this desierto
dug into the arid sands with my fingernails
and made walls out of saguaros.
I deserted the idea of a roof
because lluvia does not fall around here
but deeply regretted it when
I awoke in a pool of my own sweat. I weaved
a roof out of yucca leaves and wallowed in
the cool evening
but deeply regretted it when
I awoke under a blanket of serpientes de
cascabel
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9. |
Leavenworth
00:40
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Under a patch of the northern side of Leavenworth,
off Sheridan Drive by the air field,
two hundred ninety-eight soldiers lie in waiting,
prepared to fight.
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10. |
Rapid City
01:57
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The city that sleeps at nine
and climbs silos arranged by pine the world surrounds us, empty, dinosaurs watching over the city to keep us from the bad lands, the black hills, I will wander aimlessly at midnight
just to find a dim light flashing over
a coffee shop, the only thing open in town.
I curse the tourists, the too-rists, my
dialect, this world separated from the world
the girl who does not live here, she lives in
Custer or away at the college across the state— everything is across the state, the six hour drive through vast nothingness and over the Missouri.
This city is only here for its motorcycles and
its presidential sculptures just twenty miles southwest at best, I’d never miss the milestones
set down by a dozen failed relationships I’d settled for because I wanted more simply because they
were close by, but now that I’ve seen the mountains in her eyes my heartbeat has become more rapid
than this place and this state is just another thing
we have in common.
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11. |
Atco
02:10
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On New Years Eve through the snow
through the woods, under the pylons and to a
frozen lake. We walked on it and took in the Pine Barren silence. I thought I saw a bear—likely just
tree shadow.
We rang in the new year with pots and pans
and screamed into
the wooded void, scaring the deer
and arousing the Jersey Devil.
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Louvena the Scout New Jersey
daytime wander/nighttime lust
Louvena the Scout is Valeri Lohrman.
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