spring 2022
The World’s Smallest Evan Williams
I’ve driven 3,400 miles of road searching for the owner of the world’s largest collection of the world’s smallest versions of the world’s largest things. I have so many questions for her. Like: if they all blew away in a gust of wind, then what? Or: have you introduced the world’s smallest version of the world’s largest ball of twine to the world’s largest ball of twine? Did it seem at all maternalistic? Rumor has it she’ll be at a county fair in Kansas soon. I’m north of Salt Lake City, watching the smoke from the Western fires hide in the water of the Great Salt Lake. It creates one body of water or sky, indistinguishable from the other. There is no one else here. I’m presently the world’s largest witness of this moment. I sit on the former lakebed. The Great Salt Lake before me is the world’s largest version of what the Great Salt Lake once was. There is a praying mantis dead on the salt next to me. I prop him up against my sandal, the world’s smallest witness to the thrum, our collection corroborating the smoking sun.
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