Baked TrashMan and Liz Taylor

April 4, 2015

baked-trashman-sign-blackcattips-streetfolk-handpainted liz-taylor-eggs-blackcattips-streetfolk-art-signs

The Baked TrashMan put on his red necktie and combed his hair one last time. He grabbed his keys and went out the side door to the carport. His truck cranked up and he stretched out in the seat. He re-adjusted his necktie slightly to the right and clicked in his cassette of Hotel California. He put it in reverse.

He was on his way to pick up Liz Taylor. She had boiled up some Easter Eggs and they were going to dye them together. Baked TrashMan had been looking forward to Liz’s eggs all week. He loved the striped ones that used light blue and red and a splash-bomb of yellow. The colors bled down from top to bottom and her long fingernails were stained like a tie-dye sack.

The sun bore down on TrashMan and he pushed the gear shift into fourth. The motor hummed and wailed as he drove into Liz Taylor’s gravel drive. She didn’t believe in pavement— in fact she wouldn’t hear of such a thing. It would be too tough on her manicured nails.

They walked through the pasture and wandered the edge of the hickory trees. They placed the eggs around the trees and in a few divots in the field. A red-tailed hawk screamed. TrashMan huffed and puffed and the pollen coated his tan shoes. The hawk landed in the hickory tree. She rustled back her flight feathers and screamed once more. When they returned home they left their shoes on the back steps.

Each pile of clothes on the back porch floor took on their own melting twisting boiling shapes. They realized the sun had given up to darkness and every little thing in the room was artistic in its accidental arrangement— little installations when before they had just been piles of this and stacks of that. Papers and little boxes and junk mail and spoons — a pile of socks and t-shirts waiting on a wash. Close your eyes and the world spins and the mystery man rotates into view— round and round with his long crystalline snout. Round and round some more and you open your eyes as it all impoldes inward on itself.

The Baked TrashMan pull the gear stick back into reverse.

– kyle




Search old posts

Other Recent Posts