Introduction, photographs and poems by Sam Karas. Download as a PDF for correct poetry layout or see the images below.
BEFORE THE HILL
When the artist James Magee passed away last September, the future of his enigmatic Hudspeth County compound—referred to capitalized, as The Hill—was a mystery.
For 30 years, the artist had worked in near-secret out in the desert on an obscure
stretch of highway between El Paso and Carlsbad, New Mexico. Within the micro-canon of Southwestern art, writing about The Hill is notoriously difficult, partly because The
Hill is not a hill. It is a collection of structures—four to be exact, one for each cardinal direction—that are not located on nor resemble an actual hill.
Inside each structure is a work of art (or several) that defies easy genre categorization. Some of the works at The Hill that could be described as “paintings” or “sculptures” require a team of people to bring to existence, with heavy, mechanical moving parts.
During his lifetime, the artist himself was an important part of any viewing of The Hill. The works within the four structures all bore very long titles that might otherwise be described as poems, all performed to great dramatic effect by Magee—and only Magee. The late art
historian Richard Brettell once wrote that people who visit The Hill divide their life into two parts, before and after The Hill.
Multiple people have remarked that a common response to viewing The Hill is to burst into tears. So when the El Paso Community Foundation invited admirers of Magee out to view The Hill a year after his death, I knew that this would be an extraordinary opportunity to view something that was already extraordinary in its ordinary form. What would The Hill be like without Magee? Could there be a Hill without Magee?
After trying to write a chronologically biographical memorial for the artist in Big Bend Sentinel last year—a task almost as difficult as trying to describe The Hill itself—I knew a straight-news recounting of this utterly strange, fantastic and cathartic experience hosted by Magee’s own friends and family wouldn’t cut it. What follows is my attempt to bring you along on my journey to The Hill—like trying to reach through the newspaper and hand you a fistful of salty Hudspeth County dust.
In addition to working the border beat for Big Bend Sentinel, Sam Karas has an MFA in poetry from the Michener Center for Writers at UT-Austin. Special thanks to Mo Eldridge and Ariele Gentiles for their editorial advice.
WE LOVE YOU KATY PERRY
PLEASE COME DOWN
Space! It’s where all the rich men are going
Or at least that’s what it looks like
From the grocery store parking lot
In Van Horn, a row of Tesla chargers
And Airstream trailers no one knows how to park
This is it, boys! The future
So bright I can’t see behind me
Out in those hills Jeff is building
The Clock of the Long Now
So we never lose our place
In the slow march of time
It’s just down the road from where
They shot Katy Perry into space
And the billionaire’s fiancé
I don’t remember her name I only remember
Sydney Sweeney went to their wedding
All anyone could talk about was how
They don’t have any friends
I hope no one is sitting around
Talking about how I don’t have any friends
Nevertheless I kept on
Gossipping about people I don’t know
I wonder what rich women talk about in space
I know it was only eleven minutes
But I thought gosh it’s been a long time
I thought Oh! We love you Katy Perry
Please come down
AFTER THE HILL
On the drive I thought a lot about the word
pilgrimage and its Spanish hermano
peregrinación from the Latin
peregrinus, meaning “foreigner.”
The peregrine, by which I mean the bird,
fell out of the same linguistic nest.
Google Maps took me to a gate
in the middle of the salt flat, wired
shut. God damnit, I was running late
too. Running late to my own
peregrination. I had to stop and ask directions
from May’s Café, home of the world’s
best green hatch chile burger.
Take a left, they said, you can’t miss it.
There were cars lined up for a mile
both sides of the road. All hundreds of us
thought to wear big hats, and together
we pilgrims were a line of bobbing straw
streaming through the desert. All of us
peregrinos, walking a mile in the hot sun
and then some to cry together.
I guess that’s the simplest way
you could put it. I was feeling a bit
swimmy from the heat when I saw it.
It was not a hill at all. I couldn’t tell you
what it was.
How do we remember one who was truly great?
In iron & steel? In tidy little boxes? In oxidated
copper, cinnamon and blue?
As they used to depict the saints, with their heads raging fire?
As a giant mysterious machine, a miracle laid down static?
I left a rock at the Hill
I also left something of myself. Mo and I
split a pretty good hatch chili
cheeseburger. I drove back out across
the gypsum dunes where once
they fought a war against the Rangers.
I slept in the back of my truck
at Wes’s place and all night
and it rained relentless. All night
I dreamed about being swept away.
I dreamed about whoever
catches the bus at the Greyhound Station
in Salt Flat, Texas. I dreamed about you, too
though you didn’t look like you, you had
the tip of a match for a head. It was foggy
in the dunes all the way to El Paso,
where I picked up Fatima from the airport
feeling a little bit of grit
under my nails from the transmission shop
turned studio where the artist
spent his earthly days.
Am I different now? I have to say
I do.
