El Condenado
By Cheyenne Nimes
HOT WHEELS, the meteor had hot wheels. California custom made. Cold sweat, jiggling eyes, a kind of cinematic license when it tried to burn the Earth down. Come on baby light my fire. Meteorites were the first serial killers. Spurts of dark, red flame. No word was spoken. It is just there & knows what it is going to do. It is so perfect. How can you hate any story with the devil in it? The photograph might not look like a hand but I think it is pretty clear. It’s wild all on its own. I can't say it is from this world, nor that it isn't. & you have to know where to look. To draw the symbol over your body. The Earth’s gravity pulls the atmosphere toward its surface; we know this about ourselves, staring at one another from across the skies. Centuries we laid in wait. Sharp talons & a crossed circle signifies the four corners of the universe. When our backs are to the wall. A cracked blue billiard ball. Didn’t have much of anything this side of heaven. Cheap plastic crosses that glow in the dark. God is not in the dark. Just faint sound of cards being shuffled. Such light bodies we were after all. Glucose in the bloodstream. Your little box of being. What humans really want to know is that everything is going to be okay. A legend, or at least a good story. Like you were going to find some prize on the road that has your name on it. A fallen piece of sky. You’re not told what you’re not supposed to know. You have no concrete descriptions of the land, or the clothes, or the forest, or the castles. It makes the stories timeless & placeless. We are free in ways we never should be. We need data and more answers. Fast. It is, of course, a little joke. I’ll see your orbital belt & raise you one trajectory anomaly. No one has reported seeing it drop. That is the worst part. You never know when something's going to fall out of the sky.
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bio: 2009 winner of DIAGRAM’s hybrid essay contest, I just graduated from the nonfiction writing program at Iowa. I was a 2009 writer in residence at the Iowa Art Museum. An e-chap Coming Apocalypse Attractions has just come out on Gold Wake
By Cheyenne Nimes
HOT WHEELS, the meteor had hot wheels. California custom made. Cold sweat, jiggling eyes, a kind of cinematic license when it tried to burn the Earth down. Come on baby light my fire. Meteorites were the first serial killers. Spurts of dark, red flame. No word was spoken. It is just there & knows what it is going to do. It is so perfect. How can you hate any story with the devil in it? The photograph might not look like a hand but I think it is pretty clear. It’s wild all on its own. I can't say it is from this world, nor that it isn't. & you have to know where to look. To draw the symbol over your body. The Earth’s gravity pulls the atmosphere toward its surface; we know this about ourselves, staring at one another from across the skies. Centuries we laid in wait. Sharp talons & a crossed circle signifies the four corners of the universe. When our backs are to the wall. A cracked blue billiard ball. Didn’t have much of anything this side of heaven. Cheap plastic crosses that glow in the dark. God is not in the dark. Just faint sound of cards being shuffled. Such light bodies we were after all. Glucose in the bloodstream. Your little box of being. What humans really want to know is that everything is going to be okay. A legend, or at least a good story. Like you were going to find some prize on the road that has your name on it. A fallen piece of sky. You’re not told what you’re not supposed to know. You have no concrete descriptions of the land, or the clothes, or the forest, or the castles. It makes the stories timeless & placeless. We are free in ways we never should be. We need data and more answers. Fast. It is, of course, a little joke. I’ll see your orbital belt & raise you one trajectory anomaly. No one has reported seeing it drop. That is the worst part. You never know when something's going to fall out of the sky.
- - -
bio: 2009 winner of DIAGRAM’s hybrid essay contest, I just graduated from the nonfiction writing program at Iowa. I was a 2009 writer in residence at the Iowa Art Museum. An e-chap Coming Apocalypse Attractions has just come out on Gold Wake
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