On:

My brother’s ankle grew like a balloon. He dragged it around and bumped into things. ‘What’s happening to me?’ he said. He said it always and threw his hands down, having kicked over a train set. ‘I blame you,’ he said. ‘You’re a bad brother.’ Once I blindfolded him andContinue Reading

On:

It was the first day this town had seen a woman marshal. On my way into town all the locals were givin’ me nasty looks, but it wasn’t gonna despair me. I was there to do a job and that’s what I was gonna do. I didn’t have time forContinue Reading

On:

The cowboy built a small playground for the orphans. The orphans swarmed him. He picked them up on his shoulders. He made them fly like airplanes. The cowboy’s bones grew brittle. The children pointed their hands like guns at him when they saw him. The cowboy had a nightmare. TheContinue Reading

On:

West   A rough place I return to often. The wildness of blood between my legs. A savage quiet when the cicadas finally sleep. Heartbreak like hard candy. Slow orange days slicked down with aloe. My feet fighting with the sand. Hammering stakes down. Always conquering something or other. RibbonsContinue Reading

On:

It was the Wheatland Tiny (now self-designated Tiny-1) who’d thought it would be a nifty idea to locate all the large cowboys (literal cowboys as well as cowboys-at-heart) nicknamed “Tiny” not just in Wyoming, but all across the West, and invite them to his Wheatland ranch for a celebration. AContinue Reading

On:

If I don’t have to be awake,I won’t. Fuck you, and your world. The west, where the sun sets, is death.The sun, born in the east, dies in the west. Fuck you, and your death world. Your endgame. Dumbfucking rednecks,and their conservative think tank sugar daddies,play up the myths. RoundContinue Reading

On:

The expression on his face never changes, as the sun goes down. I holler at him a few times, kick him at least once, but it doesn’t matter; he just absorbs it with the bare minimum motions to still register as living… Since there’s no traversing the Devil’s Pass inContinue Reading

On:

The cowboy is fired by the executioner. The cowboy drags out a body as proof. It was grey and hard as a rock. ‘This is no dead body, this is an Egyptian,’ says the executioner. The cowboy feigns a heart attack and asks the executioner to hang him. ‘End itContinue Reading

On:

The minister held the closed bible in his lap. He hadn’t bothered to open the book, but he had quoted endlessly from it. Matthew Swanson didn’t mind, because it meant this was a preacher who knew the book by heart. He figured anyone who took the time memorizing it mustContinue Reading