Tuscaloosa Runs This Forest Lake Jason McCall It sounds a little enchanted, like you could turn at a stop sign and find a goblin arguing with a gnome over who would win: the ’92 or ’09 tile teams. Years ago, I saw the supernatural here: kisses transformed me, magic words kept demons in their vault. My Disney moment, though, happened in a duplex after a night with pixie shots and gin ended with me fumbling 28
over my girlfriend’s shoes. Somewhere, there is a clever statement about a Cinderella subversion, some line about pumpkins and magic being lost is hanging on one of the splintered trees that mark my own neighborhood better than street signs the delivery guys always missed. I found a shoe on my way to back to rebuild there, but I didn’t think about fairytales. I just wanted to put my head down and clean.