Author Archives: bsalter

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Saltered States by Bruce Salter “. . . Love has pitched his mansion in/The place of excrement;/For nothing can be sole or whole/That has not been rent.” —William Butler Yeats, “Crazy Jane Talks With The Bishop” EN ROUTE TO SAN FRANCISCO, CA (Weekly Hubris)—8/30/10—A pair of sandpipers strolled through the lapping foam, and the gentle [...]

Saltered States by Bruce Salter EN ROUTE TO SAN FRANCISCO, CA—(Weekly Hubris)—8/16/10—It was a pleasantly warm Sunday afternoon, the finches chirping as they gathered up insects to feed their hatchlings, and squirrels barking playfully in the shade of the swaying pine and spruce trees blanketing the steep mountainsides, as I made my way over the [...]

Saltered States by Bruce Salter EN ROUTE TO SAN FRANCISCO, CA— (Weekly Hubris) —In a parched landscape a solitary figure sat on a rock beneath a twisting Cottonwood tree, vainly trying to shade himself from the relentless sun. “Jeez, it’s hot,” he snarled, wiping his face with a soiled kerchief. “Where the hell is he? [...]

Saltered States by Bruce Salter EN ROUTE TO, CA—(Weekly Hubris)—7/12/10—The long needles she used for her intricate embroidery had no eyes. The clock she kept at her bedside had no hands. And Susan, her long brown hair braided tightly behind her head, had no heart. Her chest was a void, a black chasm containing only [...]

Saltered States by Bruce Salter EN ROUTE TO, CA—(Weekly Hubris)—6/28/10—She said she was a dancer. I studied her legs, her magnificently strong alabaster-white legs, stretching from the mountaintop on which she reclined to the smudge of forest, gleaming like a viridian jewel on the western horizon, and saw no reason to doubt her. Those legs [...]

Saltered States by Bruce Salter EN ROUTE TO, CA—(Weekly Hubris)—6/11/10—My return to Michigan, specifically to the atrophied hamlet of Brighton, was not voluntary. If geographic locations possess their own personalities, which, of course, they do, then Brighton, with its glistening patina of superficiality and prosaic intellectual retardation, would easily qualify as a front runner on [...]

Saltered States by Bruce Salter EN ROUTE TO, CA—(Weekly Hubris)—5/24/10—Jack and Jean were what some people might call typical. Jack was 27, worked in a loan office, liked to drink imported beer while watching sports, and always worried about his weight, which tended toward the excessive. Jean was 28, worked as an auditor for a [...]

Saltered States by Bruce Salter EN ROUTE TO, CA—(Weekly Hubris)—5/10/10—The Great Lumbering Thing moved across the sand like a swollen cloud; shuffling, ungainly, as it shed bits of itself to the wind. Its maddened grunts sent the Thrush and Killdeer winging for cover, and terrified ground squirrels cringed in their burrows, trembling as the soil [...]

Saltered States by Bruce Salter EN ROUTE TO, CA—(Weekly Hubris)—4/26/10—The air was heavy in the bedroom tonight. In fact, the whole house seemed like one great congested lung and she the lone molecule of fresh air, fighting for her life. Annie turned down her bed and carefully smoothed the white pillowcase, freeing it of the [...]

Saltered States by Bruce Salter EN ROUTE TO, CA—(Weekly Hubris)—4/19/10—There was once a great forest, ancient and proud, spreading like a mighty green blanket across the landscape as far as one could see. Creatures of every kind inhabited its sparkling glens and shady depths; for so vast and rich was this forest that all who [...]