socorro

For thousands of years, the southwest has conjured up images of the devil.  The devil, with burro legs, dancing spitefully alone in the furious moonlight, across sands which, under his step, light up like coals on a fire.  In the background secrets are being whispered.  New forms of nuclear power imaginable only to those who have dedicated a decade of their lives to it are being tested, mushroom clouds a common and accepted phenomenon on the far side of the mountain.  Hidden beneath bridges and between thickets of trees peoples secret sexual lives are played out for only the roadrunners, coyotes and rattlesnakes to witness.  No one questions one another here, every word taken with a grain of sand blown into your eyes, ears and every other orifice by the semi-constant winds which constantly rearrange the dirt particles and tumble the weeds.  The smoke from the forest fire one-hundred miles away chokes up the town square and the vegetables at the farmers’ market are quickly packed away.  Somewhere in the city someone silently sips a forty ounce of Tecate and crushes a cockroach protesting the disgusting way things in life sometimes are.