We Will Burn You With Our Beauty

And You Will Float Away As Smoke

August is the hottest month in South Texas. Your exhaled breath crawls back into you from fear. All things slow to still. Paint sweats from houses and digs itself into the sand. Cactus needles catch fire. The desert looks like a barren birthday cake.

August is also the last month to enter the Dark Sky Magazine Chapbook Contest. Do not delay. We are planning magnificent things for the production of the book. This will not be one of those chapbooks that looks like a church bulletin. You will not feel the need to draw upon it with one of those half pencils with no eraser.

It will be magic, and it will be yours (so long as we decide you are the winner, and you should feel confident and enter, because, after all, we both know you are a genius).

But the days are ticking down, and we don’t want you to think you were not warned.

You have until the end of this month. Commence. — Brian Allen Carr