Sheila Black Desert Life Today I despise my own sincerity, my face as in a photograph, clean-scrubbed, hair gelled and combed. There must be some irony here. I should wear odd earrings, one long and dangling, the turquoise of the macaw, the other flamingo pink, a small dot like the light that sparks on the horizon. In the evenings here darkness ascends, scrub and strip mall swallowed by the violet mouth of the night, which is oblivion, which is desire, all those cars driving, passengers immune to the hard land, fixed on the sky, larger here than anywhere, so that it is no surprise we feel little attachment to the ragged pieces of this world, starved for the gods of razors, needles, contraband carried over the border lines, toxic crystals that rush over you like sugar. Someone in a nearby town today arrested for torturing four neighbors, heating a metal spoon until it was red hot, saying he would make them sing the hymns they had forgotten. Who in such a place could care for my small story, that I order the clothes in my drawers by color, that I cook the beans daily, picking over their shapes for stones, afraid my children might break their teeth.

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