Buzzards on Parade (Redux)

The twelfth day of the month was Copperhead Monday. Serpentine was the look we were going for. Beatific upper register notes is what Maria was reaching for: Ta da la ta da la dao, was what she sang to a supper club of adoring mengeese eyeing a pair of lady rattlesnakes.

Midnight. Tuesday morning. Applause. Thunderous.

Savorous twistings of moonglow hairs into chignons and much dispensing with shoes and underthings. There was nothing like a cobra line dance to make it libertine-free and parsimonious-lite.

(I, the author, heard someone order a chocolate stout. “Not served here,” was the reply.)

Vehement—something akin to buzzards on parade: wing-wide convection current surfing loafers—something free, not imagined, not paid for, not patented and surely made to disappoint.

Asseverations to “live fully and create in the midst of the desert” notwithstanding, Maria went home alone.

What I’m Reading:

“Rimbaud said, ‘Everything we are taught is false.’ I believed him when I was eighteen and still do. Writers are mere goats who must see the world we live in but have never discovered. I write to continue becoming an unmapped river. It suits me like my skin.”

— Jim Harrison / The Search for the Genuine: Selected Nonfiction, 1970-2015