With rental thunder and lightning machines

The clouds are rising, the wind is stirring, the temperature’s dropping. To 108.

So the monsoon’s here (though no rain until July 15, I’ll guess). That means it’s time to visit Narrative’s new issue, available here, and spend a few minutes with a good summertime piece by Tito.

The title alone, “Arizona, the Sun, and What That’s Like,” gives you the flavor–drowsy, maybe playful, a little menace beneath the ease. Here’s the opening section:

1.

April in Arizona, the orange blossoms
In heat, their scent makes bees of us all.

The corners of the great American Southwest,
The orange and brown bricks, the lazy half-blue

Jacaranda, the red bougainvillea everywhere,
Thorny behemoths of the Great Mexican North,

That blood color, so much on so many white walls,
The smells of creosote, the coyote sounds at night—

This place, everything, gives itself freely to you.
Everything sings its own song, strange and plain.

But a cloudy day—don’t believe it:
There are no cloudy days.

Five bonus points for using the word “Jacaranda.” Five more for not worrying about creosote and coyote cliches. By the end, he earns it all. Really, go read the thing. (Register, if you haven’t already.)

As for the rest of the issue: Like always, it’s well-stocked with splendid employment of the latest word processing software. There’s a novel excerpt from Dick Bausch. There’s a vote against ExxonMobil from a certain Yaak Valley terrorist. And there’s an essay from Maud, too, “Conversations You Have at Twenty.” It won the silver in Narrative’s Love Story contest. For sure, TMI for Elwyn Brooks White, but it’s fine writing. Well done.