Lucas Howell

Say you love the albums with the smoky riffs and downbeat rhythms. Here , they beg, fall in with us . Forget that book , have a whiskey . . . have another . Say you love the books, the words and the silences between the words— faded yellow dashes on a disused highway. Say you love the highway, the blacktop and the bullet-riddled sign that reads Primitive Road where the blacktop ends. Say you love the fields, the black of midnight, coyotes' yipped prayers, and their raw thirst for hens. Say you love the raw salt of powder when its ghost rises from the rifle's breech and settles, sweet with lead, in your lungs. Then breathe what's left back to the world— speak the coyote's tongue, sweat the nitro from your blood, say you love what you've become.