Weather Girl Blues

A cab driver’s Christmas

It’s Christmas morning and I’m dreaming I am living with the hot weather girl from channel 9. We’re just about ready to have sex when my phone buzzes. It’s a message from T. Shane, editor and publisher of the small press magazine, Write or Wrong. T. Shane is a professor of literature who published me once. He has a soft spot for the “working class.” He thinks he’s going to save the world. I don’t know what the “T” stands for. I asked him one time and he said that was not relevant. He lives in Boston with his wife and their two cats, Harry and Clitus.

“How’s it going?” he says.

I write him back: “I’m hanging in there.”

“How’s that border violence treating you?” he says. “Why don’t you write me something about the violence there.”

I live in Tucson, in this small room. I peek out the window: calm sunny day, nothing going on in the streets. A boy rides a bright green bike on the sidewalk. A Couple of homeless guys sleep in the alley. A bird chirps in a mesquite tree. The cactus stand still and silent.

“The violence hasn’t affected me here,” I tell him. “I do believe it’s over-blown by the media.”

Overblown? He doesn’t like that.