Idaho Avenue

The palm trees in the rear distance, shrinking very slowly, maintained that brown, dry age of living things in the city. She wants to pick away at the patina, but she cannot. You cannot just reach out to touch living things. Sealed in the auto, her face was sweating as she scaled deeper into the block. Long plains of asphalt, not nearly wide enough to receive the shadows of the tall palms, caught the twisting arc of shadow the auto laid down as it rolled past a street lamp. The sun chased the shadow crowns of the palms out of the flat city, across the horizon, lengthening, always racing from the instant of dusk. Stand at the pavement. Stand in the center of the road whose end the sun sets upon. The sun chases your pale shadowy outline across beige valley crests, azure rolling highlands, and deep cavernous recesses slick with absence. You are in the vehicle moving across the pavement, your shadow in tow across the brown city. Ahead, the night populous becoming, casts away pallours of age and textures of abuse by the sun. The trees rot with the dryness of the day. Deep in their hearts lies inky definition. Take all colour, tonality, and character from the shades of the night. Make your solidity unstable and your profile, your silhouette, define you explicitly. Those cutout flats of the city on the begreyened haze stand with the assuredness of concrete decisions. You are grey; you are black. You are woman; you are tree; you are eave.


Critical Response:

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