Free Write 1
Alabama smells like burning she notes as we walk towards the Cracker Barrel in Opelika on our way out west at nine o’clock at night, and I think what? Pigs roasting in BBQ sauce? Blackening wood lying in places? Tires piled apocalypse high? Gas grunting from tired old Fords? Blue gas under cast iron under Blue Bonnet under eggs? Bulbs in the lamps that aren’t on the streets? Black garbage bags dumped in dry springs? The gunpowder residue in red plastic shells? The end of my Camel in a Mobile Waffle House? The oil we lose going down Hwy 31? The South?
Alabama smells like burning she notes as we walk towards the Cracker Barrel in Opelika on our way out west at nine o’clock at night, and I think what? Pigs roasting in BBQ sauce? Blackening wood lying in places? Tires piled apocalypse high? Gas grunting from tired old Fords? Blue gas under cast iron under Blue Bonnet under eggs? Bulbs in the lamps that aren’t on the streets? Black garbage bags dumped in dry springs? The gunpowder residue in red plastic shells? The end of my Camel in a Mobile Waffle House? The oil we lose going down Hwy 31? The South?
Free Write 2
We take I-85 to Opelika, getting the hell out of Georgia. Stop and eat Cracker Barrell Pork Chops, then ride highways through Alabama, passing through towns like Aberfoil, Goshen, Dozier, Andalusia, where the streets are empty at 8, 9, and 10 o’clock, and the dark road twists between pastures, barns, woods. In Mississippi [M-I-S-S-I-S-S-P-P-I] we drive on eight lanes one hundred feet in the air over the Biloxi Bay—not the Mississippi, which empties in New Orleans—into gaping casinos, bare streets, and an eight story high neon guitar crying HARD ROCK CAFÉ CASINO HOTEL. An old pickup truck pulls up beside us at the light while we gawk at neon signs and flashing lights running into the night with no one but us to see. The casinos empty, as we push on towards Galveston, Texas.
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