Atlas Minor • 2020 • July

Cigarette

There was a half-moon in the sky and a large man in a red pick-up truck was talking to somebody on the phone about Jesus.

“You can put on a jacket,” she says, “but you can’t take off your skin.”

When I consider the man I want to become someday, I often picture myself as someone who prays.

Today’s headlines featured phrases about “demon sperm” and “the umbrella man” because we’ve slipped into a psychedelic hell.

A list of things that inspired the book I’m writing.

The seven o’clock cheers faded long ago.

It’s two-thirty in the morning, and a caravan of motorcycles and dune buggies are growling up First Avenue, their engines rattling the windows.

The Stand brought me back to teenage nights of staying awake into the small hours with a flashlight, promising myself just one more chapter.

It doesn’t matter if the nail is in the exact right place, so long as it’s holding together two pieces of wood.

And for a lunatic moment I wonder if it will keep raining until everything is washed clean.

I remember speeding across a blank Oklahoma plain dotted with pump jacks and cattle pens.

Finishing a project means closing doors, killing darlings, and foreclosing possibilities.