colorado free writing

I want the writing to be dusty. Arid and windy as a southern colorado drive with the wash of dust littering the windshield of the old man’s truckito. I want the work as faded and easy as jeans worn well past sensibility–torn and ragged from alleys of work and hard travelling–frayed around the boots from that one time in the lanes when the rain and mud became too much for the afternoon. Pages filled with roasting green chiles and the flower smell of readied masa and greased wood stoves ready to fry. I want the work to smell wood smoked and leathery–welcoming as San Luis ristras hanging in windowsills and porches. I want the work with immense spoons of lard and diced pork–red chiles and pinto beans on metal plates. The word as men and pipes and sweet tobacco over sweatfilled hollaring and arguing poker across the alleys and side streets of their old lives. I want the pages filled with packs of stray dark haired children barefoot over gravel and unpaved streets with their great laughter and waves. Green hoses spraying and wetting down sidewalks and weeded yards–days from my grass-stained youth and early evening sunsets just behind the power mountain of the Utes turning notebook pages…

Published by

john paul jaramillo

John Paul Jaramillo’s debut story collection The House of Order was named a 2013 Int’l Latino Book Award Finalist, and his most recent work Little Mocos is now available from Twelve Winters Press. In 2013 Latino Boom: An Anthology of U.S. Latino Literature listed Jaramillo as one of its Top 10 New Latino Authors to Watch and Read. He is currently a professor of composition and literature at Lincoln Land College-Springfield, Illinois.

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