Band Call-out
Music and art are called “the humanities.” Musicians get that, especially when it’s all we have left. Art will out, even when the humanity can’t. Another version of this, differently titled, appeared in an anthology from Joyce Carole Oates. Thanks to Benjamin Wagner for the photo. I think some among us want—need—to find harmony even amid the most extreme dissonance.
That banged-up old black tanker car got left behind.
It must have been sitting there for many years, maybe decades, passing time on a split of secondary sidetrack, no place else to go. Debris and weeds choked the rails, as thicker brush grew up through its wheels and broken coupler.
Fuse sat cross-legged on the weedy patch of wannabe lawn in the big yard, just inside the pea-gravel track edged by razor-wired e
