Author: Ray Dorl

After Spencer downed his bottle of Robitussin, they drove, skirting the edges of town, where the strip malls gave way to surrounding crops of corn and soybeans. They came across a 24-hour Meijer and wandered through aisles of blinding white fluorescence until, chastened by the black surveillance camera domes on the ceilings high above them, they hurried up to the automated checkout counter with their chosen wares: Spencer, a new Spalding basketball; and Sal, a mango he’d been carrying around the store clutched against his chest like a newborn. Then they got back into the car and headed back toward campus, taking bites out of the orange-green skin of mango and spitting chunks of pulp out of their windows. They laughed deliriously as Future’s “I’m Trippin’” played from Spencer’s playlist.

Astronaut at the same time

Gone to Mars at the same time

Pluto Jupiter the same time

Pick a planet the same time

I’m trippin’, I feel ignorant

Keep rollin’, keep sippin’

(more…)

Spencer and Sal had known each other for as long as either could remember, but had only been friends since middle school.  Spencer grew up in a subdivision of well-manicured lawns and streets named after wildflowers. Sal lived across the thoroughfare, on a block populated by run-down apartment buildings and small, five-room houses with weed-choked lawns strewn with broken plastic toys and battered lawn furniture. 

(more…)