The end of something. The sign has been hammered together, the words painted on it. It’s been leaning against the wall for two days now without being put up in front. Haz elado. House for sale and a telephone number. In the pond the little frogs play hide and seek with the approaching observer. Only if one is very slow and quiet and only sometimes even then, does one see them, dark eyes and gills, shinily protruding from the water. Or suspended spread-eagled just below the surface. Like Joseph C. Gillis at the beginning of Sunset Boulevard, but with no story to tell. The big black water beetles bomb down into the two foot hazy depths, the one-man space ships of this aquatic universe.
(‘Battonya: late April (2011)’ and ‘A Walk to the Border’ first appeared in the Seagull Books Catalogue Fall 2012/Spring 2013)
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