another loss against the horns
and what is a queue for the pumps—flashy, pattern motos with missing handle-grips, side-panels scratched, in colors that don’t match, loose exhausts bobbing and ticking in the heat—clogs the gas station and spills out down the road—more pothole than road—of plastic bottles crushed into black mud, hard-packed under more plastic, more mud, more plastic, more mud, more plastic—autumn leaves on a forest floor, only autumn never comes down this far: it’s every rainfall, every flash flood—the fresh forest soil long ago swept away, this is the pungency of stagnant sewage-infused black mud on which women sell coal, closed bananas, breadfruit, kowosol, watermelon and lettuce leaves…
A short story by Roy Duffield.