Notes Toward a Midwestern Tarot
by Adam McOmber
The Two of Pentacles. The Boy from Ohio. The Nine of Burger Kings. Do you know that transformation of consciousness is possible at any moment? The Grain Silo. The Hanged Man. There are no swords or wands. Go into a trance. Let yourself be possessed by a mind more powerful than your own. The Gay Bar. The Second Gay Bar. You are not separate from your surroundings. The Country Road. The Country Store. A Piece of Pie with Your Grandparents. What you are witnessing then is a kind of cycle in which the suits of the Tarot engender one another. The Emperor. The A&W Root Beer Stand. The Three of Paper Cups. Children cannot imagine me. If they did, they’d stop being children. And what do numbers mean? The Moon. Remember the moon after you drove home from a late night of working the drive-through at a fast food restaurant? You smelled of sweat and grease and you sat in your mother’s driveway on the trunk of your Chevy Camaro and listened to the wind move the stalks of wheat in the field opposite her house. And you knew in that moment you’d never leave this place. Not really. Because even if you did, even if you drove two thousand miles, you wouldn’t have gone far enough. You’d bring all of it with you. Cornfields and Ruined Love and Backroad Graveyards. The Magician’s belt is doubled. To understand the Arcana, you must enter them stripped of words. The Dairy King. The Hermit. The Wheel of Fortune. Here is the emergence of what was imprisoned. I speak to you now from some great distance, and all of this requires a delicacy of interpretation. Look up. That’s what I say to you. The Devil. The Sun. There are towers and torches in the sky. And you too, you too are marvelous.
Adam McOmber is the author of the novels The White Forest, Jesus and John, The Ghost Finders, Hound of the Baskervilles and Snow and Wax and Mercury as well as the short story collections My House Gathers Desires, This New & Poisonous Air, and Fantasy Kit. His most recent book is the queer vampire novel With Blood Upon His Teeth.
