High Horse

By Bram Riddlebarger

A Complete History of the United States of America

The piston rod shot through the engine like the news of a divorce. We didn’t bother to ask for the TV. Wyoming was that kind of place.

 “AND YOU CAN KEEP THE MATTRESS!”

  On the ride back East, the bus was filled with the shadows of passengers, who sat in their seats like the British were coming.

California Homestead

Glitter rains down painted mural waterfalls of the Bear Cave which lies hidden in the barren landscape where chickens, pigeons, and a solitary horse homely reside. A cantina lies out back of the house for drinking and smoking, easy times at twilight where the mountains loom as far off shadows bearing down on the place, a modest, one-story homestead, white and overcrowded as most places around there are.

Bear Country

Bear country and dark, so dark there were more stars overhead than you would believe—this campsite, seven miles deep through hazardous to public use (not maintained) roads, we stopped several times, looking ahead to the mythical campground we hoped to find, the car growling and choking, popping over fist-sized rocks that lay strewn across the red dirt road, the car over-heating for the past forty or fifty miles, the first stop lasted a good forty-five minutes in a down-and-out gas station in the eighty-five degree New Mexican shade until we decided to just go, it would be our first night together, alone, the prospect of waking up beside each other pushing us on, the dog panting in the backseat, potential bear bait lest the forces of nature prevail, our odor thick, time enough for reflection and time spins on, past closed campgrounds and crumbling clay houses, a lone horse trots across the highway, unattended, searching for home and a good meal to end its day, Punta de Agua, Torreon, Chillili, the towns flit past in the endless ranchland, the mountains looming off to the west, it had been a long day, the road was becoming wearisome even with all the new lands and lonesome towns, suppertime, I pulled off great chunks of the fresh bread we had bought before leaving town and we devoured them, crust and crumb bits littering our shirtfronts and left there as testament to our hunger, a bread and water communion beneath the falling sky and an unforeseeable future, left now for the solitary campground and a short moment of peace, tranquility amidst the godly heavens and our weak arms, holding on tight for this moment and this time, so long in coming, and we fall asleep exhausted as the dog growls softly at the advance of some unknown intruder too far off for our tired ears to hear.

Bram Riddlebarger is the author of Golden Rod, Earplugs, Western Erotica Ho, and A Settled Ship in an Ocean of Hills. He is the founder of Gob Pile Press. He lives, writes, and plays music in SE Ohio, USA.

Preorders of Messages from the American Trashcan are available here: https://gobpilepress.bigcartel.com/product/preorder-messages-from-the-american-trashcan-chapbook-version-by-bram-riddlebarger