SALSA ROJA I’d been knocked out of work again. This time it was a virus instead of a recession, a Wall Street disaster or the indifference that low pay cultivates. At least the words were rolling out letting me sidestep the reality of living broke, being on the verge of losing another woman another year another chance When the sun dipped low I dug into my old Frigidaire found a half-full jar of Picante named after a Mexican town but made in a vast Ohio factory alongside the Rye Crisps and Oreos. It was a month expired but smelled okay and there was an opened bag of tortilla chips somewhere. I poured a fresh Jack and Coke and moved to the cocktail table. Brushing a stack of unpaid and unpayable bills to the floor with my forearm, I arranged everything around a lined yellow pad, scooping the salsa with one hand and scratching out words with the other. The crows cawed from the palm trees as the golden light dimmed as the moon began its quiet glide as life once again became worth living.
Curtis Hayes has worked as a grip, gaffer, and camera assistant in film production. He’s been a truck driver, a boat rigger, a print journalist and a screenwriter. He is the author of the non-fiction top-ten NYT bestseller, I Am Jesse James, and his first poetry collection, Bottleneck Slide, has recently been published by Vainglory Press.
All rights © Curtis Hayes
a moon of one's own 