The Colony
artists live in Quartzsite, Arizona
in old vans, Volkswagen buses
they play the zither,
read Shakespeare
they read Harold Bloom,
John Berger,
and they misread, mis-see
their art is derivative
Art Deco lions
busts of Mickey Mouse
collages of bumper stickers from every place they’ve ever been
they paint small with Sharpies and Crayola markers
and large with Rustoleum
they weave pieces no one will ever see
with no treadle,
no shuttle even,
just a solitary needle
and an infinite spool of thread
they make sculptures out of unhewn rocks
stacked without mortar or cement
that require repair by other people
the casual passerby
they make murals with chunks of marble,
with minerals,
unpolished gemstones,
all gathered within walking distance
they write poems about snakes and scorpions
they are not for sale
they have no artist statement
they are desperate
their work is never finished
they live alone
they unravel
there are no museums
Desperate Creatures
The sun is in league with Mother Nature, bleaching out all unnatural color.
I string a clothesline between a mesquite tree and one they call a crucifixion thorn.
The latter tree is rare, an endangered species in California, a place full of Messiahs.
A single dead mesquite leaf, I soon discover, will discolor anything white or pastel colored.
One evening around the summer solstice, something subtle shifts.
A bee appears upon my laundry, hearing perhaps the gentle noise of linen garments becoming stiff.
I sit inside, smearing calamine lotion on a heat rash spreading across my stomach.
I hear the buzzing of the bee. Then another and another.
By the time I go outside, there is a full-on swarm. My clothes are barely visible on the clothesline.
Somewhere along the way, the water situation went from low to critical. The bees gorge themselves on water.
Why don’t you use a Laundromat, my mother asks me on the phone.
I make soap from olive oil and ashes. I use unchlorinated water.
The bees finally leave sometime after sunset. The rest of the season, I hang my clothes outside at night.
For weeks after the swarm, the bees return, furiously seeking water. I can sense their anger.
I leave water in a bucket some distance off, but somehow they never find it.
The vehicles attract them. They shine like running water.
Later, I make another try at hanging laundry up by day, staying beside it to watch for bees.
The only insect is a large black beetle with broken wings, one gone entirely, the other a mangled sheet of hammered copper, translucent and paper-thin.
During Covid, they shut off the water fountains at rest areas and public parks.
The rich have indoor plumbing and don’t think twice about buying bottled water.
The homeless are like the beetle, living in the desert scrub land, scrounging for water that drips down upon a rock.
There is nothing I can do except to leave the dripping sheet.
I taste the bubbling amber sap of a nearby palo verde tree, supposedly edible, and find it bitter.
I stay and offer up my company to the dying beetle.
“The Colony” originally appeared in The Words Faire.
“Desperate Creatures” originally appeared in Tofu Ink.
Bio: Jennifer Handy
When I was young, I lived in the suburbs, which I always hated: the beige houses, the feeling of emptiness, the lack of wild greenery, the dreary sameness of it all. For years, I dreamed of spending a year or two traveling and camping in an old VW bus. As I got older, this dream faded into the background of my everyday life, as such dreams are prone to do. When I turned 40, I found myself once again confined in the ugliness of the suburbs. I grew restless and discontent, and that old dream of camping and living outdoors resurfaced. This time, I decided to follow it.
My husband and I quit our jobs, got rid of nearly all our possessions, and spent six years camping in some of the most remote areas of the western United States. Much of our time was spent near Modoc National Forest in northeastern California and in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona between Yuma and Parker. We eventually did buy an old VW camper and spent a few winters in the vibrant nomadic community in Quartzsite, featured in the book and movie Nomadland. In California and Oregon, we lived in a tent with a wood-burning stove and had a firsthand view of many wildfires. We lived with minimal technology and cooked all of our food over an open fire. We spent two summers without air conditioning in the Sonoran Desert, where temperatures rose as high as 125°F during the day and seldom fell below 95° at night. We wrapped ourselves in wet towels at night to sleep. It was a fragile, but beautiful life.
I’ve always felt like an outsider in civilization, and our time living outdoors was when I felt happiest and most at peace. It was there that I began writing again. My writing focuses on issues of environmentalism, social justice, homelessness, and mental health. I enjoy writing about people who, for one reason or another, are living on the fringes of society, particularly those who do so by choice as a way of rejecting consumerism and materialism.