Ann Weil is a past contributor to Burningword Literary Journal. Her most recent work appears in Maudlin House, Pedestal Magazine, DMQ Review, 3Elements Review, The Shore, and New World Writing Quarterly. Her chapbook, Lifecycle of a Beautiful Woman, debuted in April 2023 from Yellow Arrow Publishing. To read more of her poetry and flash fiction, visit www.annweilpoetry.com.
Helen Geld, a former graphic designer, now focuses on the creative process of photography and art. Her photographic work expresses the beauty and mystery of antique objects. Her work has appeared in such journals as Poppy Road Review, The Blue Hour, and most recently in Loud Coffee Press and Still Point Arts Quarterly.
La Manzanilla, Jalisco, Mexico, Thursday, July 11, 1991
10:50 am
I am writing in a thatched hut a half mile down the beach from the village. The surf crashes on the shore.
Supplies
2 jugs agua pura
2 cameras
Tortillas
1 can chicken meat which tastes like dog food
1 can Vienna sausage which IS dog food
2 granola bars
1 can Herdez salsa
We have traveled here from Lubbock to witness the greatest full eclipse in decades, using an Eclipse Monitoring Station fashioned from a Johnnie Walker box with a hole cut in it. The hole is covered with foil from a cigarette pack, with a smaller hole poked via a safety pin in the foil. It’s a Camera Obscura, a pinhole camera. Jimbo read about this design someplace. He is a friend from high school and has joined as a Mission Specialist. He wears a straw cowboy hat and a red Speedo. He has a portly frame.
11:00 am
We have not pinpointed what time El Eclipse will begin, having heard many different accounts. Mission Specialist Jimbo was supposed to be on this. One local said it would not occur here in this part of Mexico at all. We discounted his opinion immediately.
The man told us this last night as we sat at a table on the dirt street in front of a little store lit by a bare bulb. A large man with a cleaver, shirt open, was chopping pork on a board, then frying it in a pan over a propane flame.
“El carne?” I said.
“Si, es porco. Taquitos.”
“Dos, por favor,” I said.
He fried the chopped pork and scooped it onto two steamed tortillas.
“Frijoles?” I asked.
He handed me a Tupperware bowl with cold beans floating in it. The taquitos were mas fina. I considered my potential disablement from the mission after consuming the frijoles.
12:45 pm
A hen with six chicks has disappeared from around the shack behind us. El Eclipse underway.
12:55 pm
Eating Herdez salsa out of a can. Smoking a cigarette, peering into Camera Obscura. The earth-rending blackness we expected has not yet materialized.
1:18pm
Sort of like a cloudy day at the beach.
1:30pm
The sky seems to be lightening up. A rooster crows behind us. I believe El Eclipse is over. Jimbo reports that the whole universe has now changed and that his fillings hurt while the spectacle was underway.
A long moment of silence, as the surf crashes.
“Mine, too.” I replied.
Conclusions
The next night, drinking pulque at Hermana Hortensia in Mexico City, Jimbo and I found an English-language newspaper, showing the path of El Eclipse.
We were several hundred miles off course, far from the dark zone, figuring that the moon was really big and would black out the whole country. As the mildly hallucinogenic pulque kicked in, we closed the mission, agreeing we are clueless specks of sand on the beach.
David Fowler has lived in New York, San Francisco, and on a ranch near Penelope, TX. He writes from journals kept during his travels and lives in Jackson, MS. This is his first published fiction.
Featuring:
Issue 113, published January 2025, features works of poetry, flash fiction, short nonfiction, and visual art by Linda K. Allison, Swetha Amit, Richard Atwood, Rose Mary Boehm, Daniel Brennan, Maia Brown-Jackson, Hyungjun Chin, Amanda Nicole Corbin, Kaviya Dhir, Jerome Gagnon, Jacqueline Goyette, Julien Griswold, Alexi Grojean, Ken Hines, Minseo Jung, Sastry Karra, Joy Kreves, E.P. Lande, Kristin Lueke, Robert Nisbet, Yeobin Park, Dian Parker, Roopa Menon, Ron Riekki, Esther Sadoff, Chris Scriven, Taegyoung Shon, Mary Thorson, John Walser, Julie Weiss, Stephen Curtis Wilson, and Jean Wolff.
