Anchorage triptych
It sounds like a whippoorwill with its throat cut. Whip whoop. Whip whoop. Over my shoulder, past a sign that says IMAGE HAIR DESIGN, a raven perches on a streetlight. It arches its neck as it calls, as if trying to swallow something. Whip whoop. Whip whoop. It takes me a second; I have to whistle it first. The raven is singing the crosswalk signal back to me. Beep boop. Wheep whoop. The button activates the raven, which plucks the sound from its place and flies it from stripmall to stripmall. A clever, doomed bird. The city smells like gasoline. The city is the color of wet clay.
2
To call it a scenic drive would be wrong. The light on the black waves and the soaring white mountains obliterate all notions of scenery. He’s saying he really should’ve washed the car before our drive, given the view, but it’s more fitting with muck on the windows. The ancient peaks and the burning distance, glimpsed through brown flecks of movement. From the back seat where, hand in hand, we explode down the edge of a bright, unthinkable country.
3
He didn’t hate hunters, not necessarily, until one said to him, “Fuck hunting, I just want to kill something.” He speaks of expeditions he once led. He speaks of the Arctic Circle. He speaks of guiding and misleading and giving up. His eyes are sure but elsewhere. In the dimly lit bar his righteousness is a glowing line, a major latitude around a faltering sphere.
ben tapeworm