R.D. Armstrong's poems "Old Paint" and "The Road (More or Less Traveled)
Bio: (RD Armstrong) Raindog has retired. He spends his days trying to remember how he got here; floating down a lazy river that lives in his mind. He continues to help out wherever he can, but he's no longer running the Lummox Press. Ah, what a relief! Old Paint Spanish Mike sat on the tailgate of his pickup and waited for the dust cloud to reach him. The pickup, an ancient, rusting thing, had finally lurched to a halt, a death rattle shaking the frame as the last drops of oil sizzled on the hot roadway. The pickup, which Mike had nursed through ten years of hard, lonely roads, finally threw a rod outside Mexican Hat and it was through some fluke that he’d been able to get as far as the southern edge of Monument Valley, almost to the Grand Canyon exit. Mike waited for the USPS Ranger to get close enough to see him before he pumped a couple of rounds of deer shot into the radiator, a symbolic coup-de-gras and flipped the sawed-off up to his chin like Lucas McCa...