This is an experiment in narrativity (quietude) of sorts. By that token I guess you could say it's an experiment in being nonexperimental. For some reason this particular story seemed to lend itself to barebones narration. Hopefully the end product is not abysmally dull!...

HOLY LAND, Waterbury, CT


She drove the car first in one direction & then another,

the arcs of her going made parentheses around the town

where people wandered by daylight in the streets,

between the lion & the lamb,later the waxing moon

would rise again over the cross on the hill. She saw the weathered sign,

"Holy Land," welded to the signpost where there were woods

& little rolling hills & no other cars there. She drove

along the road until the periphery: an old house & a dirt path.

No-one within. She followed the path into the woods, by herself,

a little while & she saw it then, the little Jerusalem that made the hill

a mountain, shining strangely on the hillface, playing

games with scale. & also Gethsemane, where she walked,

placards' sans serif script fading into concrete, some sacred names

erased by rain, others remained unblemished:

she looked into the neck of a headless camel & saw its

concrete guts there, stone heaped around its legs

like the earth had spit it up, two thin tines of metal where

the left leg had been. Here it had stood for 20 years or

more, looking out on the Temple ground, Golgotha,

the holy streets of the little holy city where children now

adults had eaten lunch & asked about god & heaven--the city

considered & gave its answer decades later: the Temple

was large enough to enter standing, her head close to

the vaulted roof, the minarets where spiders lived. On the walls,

austere grafitos, nameless initials & prayers.

She finds a discarded photograph (the

god who lives in desolation), sees shimmering green plastic,

immune to weather, on the path to the cross that can still

be seen from the highway.