A boy pumps gas into a rusty pickup truck at a solitary gas station on Route 66, outside Tucumcari, New Mexico. He wipes windshields with a filthy rag, pushes the black hair out of his soft brown eyes, sops up the rivulets that run down his temples and his neck using a faded red bandana. An endless exodus of weary, road worn travelers marches by, headed west, dislodged by dust. The smell of sweat, the sight of families fleeing the fury of the land worms its way into his own journey. Their faces follow him like phantoms all his life, past the cactus, across the sand, searching for a space where the soil sits still. The earth has come loose. There is nothing to hold it down. It is rootless, displaced, adrift on a sea of highway. The ghosts are awakened by a bitter wind unleashed from the fields; they descend with a sudden darkness. There is no windshield, no air, only rising smoke and flames. Thunder roars, crashes reverberate, echoing in the blackness. A fresh grave stretches out on a two mile swath of Interstate 55 in Montgomery County, Illinois. The boy has long been buried, deep in a pine box, but the memory billows up in a cloud of sorrow. Among the dead is the soil, abused and abandoned. The dust is still angry. The air still smells like loneliness and rage. The homeless ground lashes out, desperately searching for a place to land, for a space to be still.
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Laura Belin: Iowa Politics with Laura Belin, Windsor Heights
Doug Burns: The Iowa Mercury, Carroll
Dave Busiek: Dave Busiek on Media, Des Moines
Art Cullen: Art Cullen’s Notebook, Storm Lake
Suzanna de Baca Dispatches from the Heartland, Huxley
Debra Engle: A Whole New World, Madison County
Julie Gammack: Julie Gammack’s Iowa Potluck, Des Moines and Okoboji
Joe Geha: Fern and Joe, Ames
Jody Gifford: Benign Inspiration, West Des Moines
Nik Heftman, The Seven Times, Los Angeles and Iowa
Beth Hoffman: In the Dirt, Lovilla
Dana James: New Black Iowa, Des Moines
Pat Kinney: View from Cedar Valley, Waterloo
Fern Kupfer: Fern and Joe, Ames
Robert Leonard: Deep Midwest: Politics and Culture, Bussey
Tar Macias: Hola Iowa, Iowa
Kurt Meyer, Showing Up, St. Ansgar
Kyle Munson, Kyle Munson’s Main Street, Des Moines
Jane Nguyen, The Asian Iowan, West Des Moines
John Naughton: My Life, in Color, Des Moines
Chuck Offenburger: Iowa Boy Chuck Offenburger, Jefferson and Des Moines
Barry Piatt: Piatt on Politics: Behind the Curtains, Washington, D.C.
Macey Spensley, The Midwest Creative, Davenport and Des Moines
Mary Swander: Mary Swander’s Buggy Land, Kalona
Mary Swander: Mary Swander’s Emerging Voices, Kalona
Cheryl Tevis: Unfinished Business, Boone County
Ed Tibbetts: Along the Mississippi, Davenport
Teresa Zilk: Talking Good, Des Moines
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