All the Beautiful People We Once Knew

by Edward Carlson

  An African woman wrapped in kente cloth and hair braided with cowrie shells gestured to ask if she too could take one of the boxes.

  “Of course, of course,” I said. “Take.”

  I dumped the contents of the bottomless boxes. A cascade of paper and words. I stacked them atop the protestors’ carts and hand trucks. More protestors stepping forward now from the shadows to ask if they too may take a box.

  “Yes, yes,” I said. “But burn it. Make sure you burn it.”

  The paper poured forth from the boxes and bushelsworth covered the ground. To be burned. Incinerated. For food and warmth and light. The earth now and finally forever devoid of Thomas, I left behind the cart and entered the shadows of the overpass.

  I walk north along the river. Up and over and down the Williamsburg Bridge. Imagining the light show, the borealis, of the impending solar storm. Ribbons of red and green solar radiation draping the sky, cascading toward earth, then touching the electrical grid, setting the city to sparks. There won’t be anything sublime about it. Now toward the port. The sweet smell of coal tar epoxy. The surprising speed of machinery and tonnage transported on water. An arriving vessel summons winds from the south. Up ahead there is a lightship, The Ambrose, anchored and red atop the black river, with retrofitted diesel stacks and radio wires strung between its twin, illuminated masts. Ready to assist in the event solar radiation renders mankind technologically helpless. From sea level the city looks small. Exposed on all sides. A buoy rings its hidden maritime bell and rotates atop its chain. Above the highway there is a billboard, graffitied by a gallant vandal.

  TERESA, the sign commands, FREE YOUR MIND AND SOUL WITH XAVIER.

  Acknowledgments

  Maxim Brown at Skyhorse; Keir Politz for early support and continuous friendship; Ensieh Esfandiari for early morning assistance getting out the door to finish the manuscript; Erika Lunkenheimer, Michelle Vitale, Haleh Atabeigi, Liz Keenan, Conor Politz, and David Jacovini for encouragement; Brendan McBride and Miriam Ackerman for time and space on the Mullica River; Louis Prieur and Flore-Anne Bourgeois for time and space in Nernier; Payam Zarbakht and Nadia Esfandiari for time and space in England; Joel Zighelboim of Jones Street, Andre and Brenda (Duza) Wilkinson, Emad Kiyaei, Anne O’Callaghan, Tom Griffin, Aleksandr Ilchuk, Peter Dee and Susan Lee, Charles Hoffmann, Eric Matheson, Andy and Valerie Loy, Alessandra Lacavaro, Maurice Al-Haddad, Nick Kratz, Paul Ryan, and Juen Romanoff for friendship and support; and the family for having my back.