T-SHIRT SAINTS

Telephone chords strung and pressed into the dirt
to map the lay of a fence built with glass posts-
- smashed and resculpted from green cola bottles.
Copper wire webs the soil--a grid--
hugging floor beams scrapped from a windmill fire.
Bird feathers hammered into paste
then used to paint triangular patterns on welded carhoods,
disorienting wild prey and acting as a barricade.
An unrecognizable saint with a gold frame that stinks of sugar,
painted to a t-shirt draped on a wooden cross with a cardboard sheet,
serving as a stand to showcase “our lady of......”

Melted candles chalk the curb in a tie dye swirl.
Onlookers, visit the occupied lot,
taking turns carving shapes into the air.
After the rains, a builder picks through what has been smoothed and carried.
The paint on his hands map a confettied constellation.
A holy site that is holy because
“we are god’s creation and we choose what is holy.”
Strangers tell their stories to find themselves represented.
Each member of the village is portrayed in a saintly guise,
each takes turns worshipping the other.

For some, they had never been met with such respect.

by Dylan Angell

Dylan Angell is a North Carolinian who is currently based in Mexico City. In 2016 he released the book, An Index of Strangers Whom I Will Never Forget A-Z, via his Basic Battles Books imprint. He has collaborated on two books with photographer Erin Taylor Kennedy; 2017’s I'll Just Keep On Dreaming And Being The Way I Am and 2018’s Beyond the Colosseum. In 2019 he released Sinking Windows, a bilingual publication that was printed in Mexico City.