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| scott sweeney |  | 1. Horseflood With the power out, the house resonates an unsettling silence. I am afraid to speak. I am afraid of not speaking. Outside, the hours-ago evening is closed in the dark fist of midnight. I am stumbling through the carport, toward the road, hoping for residual light from the city, osmotic through the line of oak and pine trees across the street. Passing cars appear as hovering pairs of white orbs, moving in tandem, followed closely by ill-defined blobs of pure black. Crickets and cicadas click their warnings from all around. I can hear them down the hill, in the swamp, a quarter mile away. They are telling me to go back inside (if I can find my house). And if the rains come back and Richview Road floods into a river full of horse bodies and children’s toys and hooptie cars and crooked politicians and the most updated iPhones and Truck Nutz and hanging chads, I’ll never see them. Your secret is safe with me. 2. Pity Fuck There is not a bead of sweat on your body, the horrible monocolor artifice set against barely illuminated seafoam— whole artworks uncoupled and half-arranged, anonymous timeshare beach décor screams, This is temporary, a brief visitation. Your breaths are too far apart to be any spent, your auburn hair still curled perfectly—choreographed twirl over eyes heavy-lidded and turned toward the Gulf. On the horizon, the fishing boats blink like exit signs. | |
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