Every field is an archive of plagues. Clouds choked and breeding. The fickle promises of winged bodies, and then: what happens when they come to collect. Dust in the vulgate. A throat sore at the buckle, mouth flooded with ill winds, salt water. Her antennas cocked toward the sun. A serene annihilation. Like John the baptist in the desert, she’d eat him with wild honey if she could.

Publisher’s Notes:

1. Whereabouts are unknown for Grasshopper and Farmer (oil painting, 1937) by Otis Dozier (1904–1987), a painter, printmaker, and teacher who was also a member of the Dallas Nine, a group of Texas Regionalist artists.

Image above is from page 9 of a 28-page pamphlet from the “Otis Dozier Exhibition” at the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts in 1956, which includes a list of artworks in the exhibition, plus images and essay. Archived at University of North Texas Libraries, the pamphlet may be viewed at the digital repository The Portal to Texas History:
https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth183388/

2. Dozier created a lithograph with the same title and year, but with a slightly different composition: the grasshopper pins the farmer facedown in his desiccated field. See both images, plus details about Dozier and his work, in Wanted: Lost Art, Russell Tether Fine Arts Associates, LLC (13 November 2013); scroll halfway down the page to the second section, “America’s Lost Art.”

3. For more about the artist, with images of additional artworks, see biographical article by Kendall Curlee at Texas State Historical Association (1 December 1994; updated 11 January 2020):
https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/dozier-otis-marion

4. Links above were retrieved on 9 May 2022.

Olivia Wolford

is an anthropologist, writer, and teacher from Dallas, Texas. Her flash fiction “Star Swallowed” (nominated by The Ekphrastic Review) will be featured in the Best Microfiction 2022 anthology. She currently lives in southern Chile.