Page 23 - The Woven Tale Press Vol. Iv #8

interested in my footsteps so I had to con- tinue walking in the dark.
A motel sign made from the weathered fur of a large one-thousand-year-old dead ani- mal blinked next to a dirt parking lot. The front-desk person in the motel lobby was asleep. I gently rubbed her head until she began to drool.
Most of the motel rooms were empty, but I only touched the one whose window was so thin no one would notice if I broke it.
If you put all the hours of a single year in a bag and then weighed this bag, it would have been equal to the amount of weight I had gained since I last cleaned any of the pieces of my skin.
In the shower I found a used ashtray, a three-year-old calendar, and some mouse droppings. I didn’t bother removing any of it before turning on the water. Someone had left a bag of peanuts next to the sink.
I ate the bag empty before I realized they
weren’t peanuts.
I set my boots on top of the television.
Boots Walking in America was born in America. He got his first library card before his left pupil fully opened. He was four. His mother had a bad grease rash on her face, but he still loved her. When Books Walking in America finally became an adult he got a job at the local university gas station. Later, he was promoted to emptying the van. He has never left the continent.
orginally published on sleeping sh.net
Before earning his MFA from Brown Unviersity, Baumer sold “Yankees Suck” shirts outside Fenway Park. And he has walked across America from Gerogia to California.
The Battle Never Won
acrylic/mixed media 48” x 24”
by Virginia Vilchis
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