Thousand Palms
Matt Greene


At an oasis in the desert, hidden by fields of windmills, yucca and trailers, our hearts beat faster, acclimating to the vacuum. The oasis was a two-mile loop, which we traveled in conflict. We acted as if it was all some kind of joke, but that was because we felt the disagreement in our skin and teeth, because we didn't have a name for whatever was happening, couldn't put it into words. Some of us rested among the palms and some of us felt the desert was anarchy and they had brought a sledgehammer. Mostly we didn't talk and sometimes some of us went over with the sledgehammer and turned hard things into dust. We took turns tossing rocks and hitting them in uppercut. We wanted to know what was inside the cacti so we found out. Some of us had gathered in the shade on a bed of fallen fronds. There are things a sledgehammer cannot fix, one of us said, and another of us said, Who said anything about fixing?


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