A SPECIAL BELT - chelsea hogue

Nothing is left but silence. At least he has that. Roberto is laying in the trench, surrounded by a scene of no striking faces, just a monogamous flow of ordinary. He can look up the side of the mountain that almost looks human.

He’s a Spanish conquistador building shelter out of palm branches, regal, cool, calculated yet impulsive, taking native prisoners. He looks over his mangled armor, coiled around him now like a sardine lid, hundreds of feral guinea pigs’ tiny claws clinking over his breastplate.

He’s a martyr. He’s a soldier. He’s a young boy sitting inside a large bugle horn, painted candy-red, sitting cross-legged, laughing.

Revisiting everything Barry Hannah