Elocin Press

A few years ago my father set out a few boxes of my old things. In one of the boxes was a deck of cards that a friend and I found when we were in middle school. We were walking through the greenbelt that connected the various neighborhoods together in a suburb of  Houston. We were probably walking to the Stop n Go to hang out with the older kids and smoke cigarettes and play video games at the pizza parlor.

There were two boys farther on in the woods throwing something at a bench. They noticed us and ran off through the trees. When we got to the bench we found a deck of cards scattered all over. A ninja star was pinning one to the back of the bench. A deck of naked porny men. My friend and I picked the cards up out of the dirt and organized them. My dad had a similar sort of deck, but it was the same woman on the back of the card in the same pose again and again and again, 52 times. This deck was 14 different men. The cards were well abused, worn, torn, some with holes, a few were burned at the edges. We happily split the deck between us. Tucking them for safe keeping in our back pockets.

This, friends, is that deck of cards. Behold!

Tonight my teenager was driving us home. She was saying how much she likes the nighttime. The rain, the darkness, the reflection of light on the windshield. Her saying that reminded me of summer nights in Houston. How warm and thick the air was. How the June bugs would collect at the beginnings of streets, just at the edges under the street light. You could sit on a curb in shorts and a tank top and not be cold. You might even be sweating.  If you were smoking and you exhaled, the smoke would hang in the air, otherworldly. Continue reading “all the different nights”