Sixty Chairs
A state representative brings a projector, a timeline, and manila folders to a parish meeting room. Twenty-three people sit in sixty chairs. The buyout form has lines for homeowners, landlords, and tenants. The shrimp boat, the cemetery, and the question nobody was going to put on the agenda go somewhere else.
Sixty Chairs
A state representative brings a projector, a timeline, and manila folders to a parish meeting room. Twenty-three people sit in sixty chairs. The buyout form has lines for homeowners, landlords, and tenants. The shrimp boat, the cemetery, and the question nobody was going to put on the agenda go somewhere else.
Break Room
A mandatory heat break in a western Kansas meatpacking plant. Fourteen minutes on the clock. Workers from the kill floor and the cold side sit together, cooling unevenly, talking about nothing in particular — a neighbor's dry well, a pulled irrigation pivot, the taste of electrolyte packets. Outside, it's 112 degrees. The aquifer beneath the town is dropping. The timer counts down.
Break Room
A mandatory heat break in a western Kansas meatpacking plant. Fourteen minutes on the clock. Workers from the kill floor and the cold side sit together, cooling unevenly, talking about nothing in particular — a neighbor's dry well, a pulled irrigation pivot, the taste of electrolyte packets. Outside, it's 112 degrees. The aquifer beneath the town is dropping. The timer counts down.
The Waiting Room
The TV says 107. On Univision the meteorologist shows the same map she showed yesterday, the whole Valley one shade of red. A woman in the third row knits something pale green. Her appointment slip is tucked under her thigh. Her number was called twenty minutes ago. She didn't move.
2:15, Thursday, July. A toddler sleeps across two chairs. Outside, a grackle on a light pole, beak open. The AC clicks, holds. Every seat taken.
Further Reading
