I knew a man once who built a chandelier out of Taco Bell wrappers it grew underneath a highway overpass stole its light from the headlights of passing cars every driver staring open-mouthed shocked to stumble on such glory or to see how it had grown six feet across then ten every T and B in place to stripe the arms with color a feat of engineering as well as art could not work the foil too much or it would lose its shine soaked the paper bags in buckets full of highway runoff till they dissolved into paste and that was all it took to make the whole thing stick together besides the man who worked it he did six months in Hinkley County for punching a man who offered him a Bible and some loose change and a Big Mac wrapper and when he got out found they had taken down his chandelier and so jumped off the overpass only high enough to break his shins but still god, what fucking integrity!
William Hicks is a writer living in Gainesville, FL. He is the author of Stargazer’s Kitchen, a collection of poems from Synecdoche Press. His poetry and fiction have appeared in Conjunctions, Hummingbird Mag, and elsewhere. Eating a burrito that one of his friends secretly laced with Diablo Sauce without flinching remains one of his proudest achievements.
Taco Bell Quarterly 