THE
interview
by Danielle Gallo
20
Cenizo
Spring 2020
I licked my first pot sherd a click downhill from a midden that looked
like just another beige wash, even when you were standing right on
top of it. It was a shallow arroyo, hardly that even, more like a crease
on the desert, differentiated only by a depth of a few inches and a
slightly greater prevalence of smooth round stones than the beige to
either side of it.
“Just lick it. Tastes good.” The mustachioed man crouching in the
paltry shade of a scraggly cedar had a habit of grunting his
monosyllables. He was swathed head-to-toe in loose clothing except
his feet, which were seated precariously in flip flops. Every inch of
him, from the bandana tied under his chin to the frayed cuffs of his
generic cargo pants, bore a layer of caliche dust so thick it cracked in
the creases of his elbows and knees. His hat was felt, shapeless, and
stained black from the brim to halfway up the crown, the sweat even
now soaking through the dust, making a wide slick band of clay the
color of laundromat curtains, circa 1980. He had clearly gone native…
or whatever one goes after too many lingual assaults on ancient
artifacts.
I held the little triangle of pottery in two fingers and hesitated. The
silence was a pressure on my eardrums, disorienting me, making me
wonder if I were going deaf, until a crunch of stones under the feet of