“A Travelogue Ft. The Ghost of Sylvia Browne” & “What Refuses to be Televised” by Jaime Garcia


Illustration of a person crouched over a machine on pink background. Blue thought bubble filled with ghosts.

A Travelogue Ft. The Ghost of Sylvia Browne

Canceled a breathless exit.
Starved the space between griefs.
Invited all kinds of disasters to dinner.
Watched the sky bend to terror and all the eyes it owns.
Rode granite sunsets into shining horse quarries.
Smoked all night on the balcony.
Read volumes of rebooted endtimes from your flashing weather reports.
Heard the earth weighs what it weighs despite us.
Saw you more or less in a constant state
of waiting for your mom to walk through the door.
Found a missing orchard I saw on the news.
Hugged the suicide vests of empty beds.
Returned an unanswered recording to an extinct apartment complex.
Surprised entire mountains by waking up.
Felt the redacted saviors tattooed across trains shake our brittle continent.
Smelled an intersection flowered with glass.
Brawled my way through the glittering bedsheets
waving across clotheslines
in another world's backyard.
Offered radio to the hollow space above.
Endangered the footsteps in the hallway by listening.
Called a forest by your name.
Proved a presence by witnessing armies of emptiness.
Tasted the canceled gardens, strung-out between deserts.
Reconstructed an orange grove and a neighborhood
and a missing person from memory.
Deleted a staggering playlist of sunsets.
Trafficked all of our ugly accidents across state lines.
Had this dream where wind is the only wild animal left in California.

What Refuses to be Televised

The exodus was canceled for violent weather,
all raptures suspended indefinitely.
We went home and set fire to the mountains.
In this silence I wish the astronauts' deaths were uglier.
I wish the mushroom cloud.
I wish the trash, the noise, the smoldering campfires
left behind.
Sometimes I'm drinking alone in a park
and you interrupt the porch light
in the other universe.
Like this we survive each other.

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Jaime Garcia is from Rubidoux, California. His poetry has appeared in various online and print publications, as well as on several esteemed refrigerator doors across the Inland Empire.

Jeannie Colleene is a multi-instrumentalist, producer, artist, and 1/2 of the noise duo, HXXS. Born in Bakersfield, CA. Raised in Portland, OR. Currently living in Kansas City, MO. She has screamed her way across the US many times over for close to 10 years.  She spends her time making music, making art, and playing shows. Most importantly, she is the mother of one Siamese cat. Find her on Instagram at @jcolleene & @wearehxxs.