Deconfliction

RV park stillness, sausage smoke on the breeze, LSU flags snapping ten hours before kickoff. Turbodog bottles on the floor. Bumper stickers grinning lies. Inside the “processing” facility—chain-link and concrete, no air moving, silence heavy as stone. Men slumped, eyes gone gray, the smell of sweat and mildew doing all the talking. Sterile orders. Martial promises. A call to war in bureaucrat’s cl...

White government vans at dawn, motel coffee burnt black, clipboards ticking in fluorescent hum. A protein bar plant in nowhere-upstate, sugar in the air, bleach in the lungs. Workers lined like mannequins, hands twitching, eyes darting. Radios squawk, boots slam tile, cuffs bite wrists. Authority rehearsed like theater, cruelty as routine, terror as boredom. Another job logged, another number in t...