Sundown Town by Julie Tran

sundown town

By: Julie Tran

the setting sun spurned their souls through the rotting underframe and floorboards glimmered soft a wistful spell and song of mockingbirds with manilla wings the lulling lament seeped out onto the gray dust of the streets a fog of smoke wreathed sleeping heads as the nearby town became ghosts with the white of their skin paling and the flush of their cheeks purpling

the rising moon burned their blood scattering and scurrying up the chapel hill of stone and ashes like a writhing mass of silver maggots they carried blazing firelights with cotton wicks the smothering heat brazened their faces in search for burnt and decaying flesh the swarm buzzed in riled unison disease desecration and death to the persecuted who would serve their hunger

the gleaming star turned their eyes northward to follow the constellation trails marked and sung about by ancestors before the trade winds carried and guided the birds with clipped wings in their flight up the mossy hill where the ashes of those who flew before solemnly sighed under the weight of bronze and copper stones in hopes of fulfilling stilled dreams at last they wearily marched towards the red horizon

morning fire churned between the rim of the ground and sky to form the mouth of a drinking gourd spilling liquid flames of flickering crimson down the hill fissuring ash and stone into imbrued rivers crawling towards the afflicted flock of flight with suffocating scarlet stifling their throats with knotted strains yet still they lifted their silenced voices in unison to sing freely at last

Artwork by Donna Tran