We aren’t much for science, so when a sprinkler’s bursting turns into a babbling brook, we think, well okay, there goes the drought. The air shimmers and sparkles with particles of dust as it rollicks by, an absolutely bona-fide river now, its banks filling up with bearded miners panning for gold in their plaid flannel shirts, six guns handy, like it was high noon on the cul-de-sac. Saloons and grub and good time girls and all such words bubble up from the past, while a lone banjo’s heard strumming “The Days of ’49” along this new-fangled waterway, glittering with promise.
stories have appeared in Defenestration Magazine, Misfit Magazine, Six Sentences, Star 82 Review, Tiny Molecules, and in the anthology Weatherings (FutureCycle Press, 2015), among others.
