by Will Cordeiro

I’m a sad shadow that’s strayed from whatever cast it. I sit on the dock. A ship departs—a sand-grain slides its hourglass. The horizon gorges the sun’s fat red hotdog down its gullet. Luscious cloudbanks smolder: mauve yields to marigold, magenta, fuchsia. These terrible, splintering colors are worthless. I find them irresistible. I breathe a few cinders. Of course, I’ve read about the slow heat death of the universe. Still, I keep moving through the dormant hinterlands, the nameless distances, seascapes and orphaned graveyards, canyons and floodplains, the mazing randomness of cities, these quiet suburbs that deceive us.

Will Cordeiro has recent work published or forthcoming in AGNI, Bennington Review, DIAGRAM, The Threepenny Review, THRUSH, and elsewhere. Will won the 2019 Able Muse Book Award for Trap Street. Will coedits Eggtooth Editions and teaches in the Honors College at Northern Arizona University.