Roy Kesey > Quotes

“He walked on steadily, and the black patches returned, took on strength and depth, became the houses of a small town. Joško wondered why there were no lights on anywhere. It wasn't possible for everyone in the town already to be asleep — sunset hadn’t been so long ago. Then again, time was no longer what it had been. Before, it splintered easily into hours and minutes, but now it was a dense vastness around him, contracting and expanding erratically, the heart of a dying giant.”
― Roy Kesey, Nothing in the World

“So far he’s never been bit, but there was once, deer hunt, climbing a bluff and he’d slipped, rolled down a shale slide into some kind of grotto and the whole place started buzzing. Big rattlesnake nest, twenty or so, all small but they’ll kill you just the same and he’d scrambled and cranked round after round through the bolt, felt a hot white pain in his leg, dropped the gun and jumped. Once he was out of it he pulled down his pants, found the bite but it wasn’t a bite, just the one hole and too big, something lodged under the skin. He cut at it for a time. Piece of copper jacket from one of his own bullets, turned out. Stood there, sun in his eyes, blood on his hands, pants full of blood and bunched at his ankles, happy as he’d been in a while.
- "Any Deadly Thing”
― Roy Kesey, Any Deadly Thing

“The birds are catching fire again. I keep shouting up to them, Fly lower, fly lower! They never listen. They’re dropping all around us now, and we run for the nearest building, this big squat red thing, a county office of some kind, maybe something to do with zoning? But the door is locked and no one comes no matter how loud we knock so we cover our heads and run across the street to this cheesy trattoria-type thing and huddle there under the awning, or what should be an awning, red-and-white striped, but isn’t—there’s nothing left but shreds after the big birdstorm last week.
- "[Exeunt.”
― Roy Kesey, All Over

“Reynaldo says that the pacazo is nothing but an uncommonly large iguana. I prefer to believe that it is some imp of history, coincidence made scaled flesh, a god no one worships anymore, not magnificent in its fury like the gods of the Wari or Moche or blood-smeared Chavín but some petty, bitter, local god who hates fat pale pillaging strangers.”
― Roy Kesey, Pacazo: Dynamic Lifestyle Changes to Put YOU in the Driver's Seat