In a pile of jalapeños, some will be touched with red. And what waits at the edge of fields but a boy, not yet as tall as the plants when their drooping star blooms are about to set. What is the cost of capturing heat? How will it be measured in an unreachable scale? Yet, from labor, sometimes growth. A gaze, cast far over fields, bringing a faint sense of beauty. A fragrance that escapes measure, though it stirs the body. Prompting another lean into fierce radiance, for want of those moments.

Little Boy with Peppers, Mexico (1940s)
Gelatin silver print by Carlotta M. Corpron

Publisher’s Notes:

Link below was retrieved on 14 April 2023.

1. Photograph above is held by the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas:
https://www.cartermuseum.org/collection/little-boy-peppers-mexico-p19881663

2. Carlotta M. Corpron (1901-1988) was known for her abstract compositions featuring light and reflections, made mostly during the 1940s and 1950s. She is considered a pioneer of American abstract photography and a key figure in Bauhaus-influenced photography in Texas. An educator for decades at the Texas State College for Women, Professor Corpron bequeathed her archive to the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, which holds 138 prints, over 800 negatives, and the Carlotta Corpron Papers.

Daryl Scroggins

has taught creative writing and literature at The University of Texas at Dallas, The University of North Texas, and the Writer’s Garret, in Dallas. He now lives in Marfa, Texas. He is the author of This Is Not the Way We Came In, a collection of flash fiction and a flash novel (Ravenna Press), Winter Investments: Stories (Trilobite Press), and Prairie Shapes: A Flash Novel (winner of the 2004 Robert J. DeMott Prose Contest). His poems, short stories, and creative nonfictions have appeared in magazines and anthologies across the country, including Blink Ink, Cutbank, Eastern Iowa Review, New Flash Fiction Review, Star 82 Review, and Third Wednesday, among others.