Issue #1, Nov. 2012: Elliot Harmon - Cascading
Cascading My hoodie is soaked. It’s a gray Sunday afternoon. All of Mission a lake. My feet are cold, almost wipe out on the 2000 block, missing the curb. The taco stands, idyllic, yet so wonderfully there, smell gingery and safe. Even the chapel is wet. The street preacher at the plaza shouts into his cheap PA, the words swim out along the crackles, his bright blue tie behind his raincoat. His assistant, without asking, hands me the English version. I say thank you. After buying toothpaste, the bakery for coffee. Drenched, I drink it standing up. The usuals all watching the TV so I look up and see the foil-wrapped antenna, the picture cascading up the screen over and over and over. It was on the Spanish channel, his mullet, his smile, I knew. It was something about the anchor’s tone, obituary-voice, mid-90s footage. Something about a frog splash off the top rope— how it, if pure in heart, can be a prayer. Something about the Cow Palace, my seat in row Y peering over the brine of sweaty black t-shirts when he rose from the turnbuckle and everyone and I stopped breathing.
for Eddie Guerrero