Charles McLeod

[excerpt from Charles McLeod's "Exit Wounds" in the Spring 2007 issue of ZYZZYVA]

Mission Street was miles long, and I’d been over every inch of it, from the Greyhound station at the foot of the Bridge out to Silver Avenue, where most of the shop signs were in Spanish. But I could never remember what stood where, the specific order of things, so I walked the blocks again and again, checking and rechecking, hoping some wide, precious idea might strike me, because I could feel myself getting older, the ports closing, the ships pulling up their ropes.