April Littrell
Outpost
Morning trek to the outpost for some mud. Curtains flutter and part and drink us in. An automatic bell chimes for flaps of bodies and bodies of fabric but might miss the entrance of the neighbor cat if he were to waltz out and want steamed milk foam and his tail were to billow high enough to reach the sensor in a parabolic arc of autonomous appendage movement. A cat’s tail is its own cat, equally as curious as to what it’s attached.
The potable petroleum peddler, Wisley, not Wesley, or Wis, grabs a bottom-shelf poetic device from the counter and whispers love into paper cups. A flat white woman hands a holy tarot to her bean juice elixir mixer who punches it, and is so good at and used to punching it it gets holier and holier until it ascends economic stratagems and completes its transition into liquid sunshine, brown sunshine like through typical sunglasses, a small card passing for a hot, creamy drink with a little design on top—maybe a swan or a snake or the drip off the tip of a gas hose into a rain puddle, diluted energy.