Honorable Mention: Patamon, Prince of El Porto
“Snails on the stick,” by Melissa Chong. Rancho Palos Verdes in June 2026. Sony A1 and 300mm 2.8 + 2x tele. “Be check’d for silence, but never tax’d for speech.” — All’s Well That Ends Well, William Shakespeare by J. E. Marshall El Porto was still The Island. You went to Pancho’s to get Chinese food. You went to The Curtain, a surfer dive bar, for a great hamburger. Teens on skateboards egged each other in a second-hand civil war borrowed from the Manhattan Beach Mustangs and the El Segundo Eagles. There was no high school on The Island. Raymond Chandler’s red wind was at it again. The Santa Anas scooped up smut from the refinery then kicked sand in El Porto’s face. It composed a deafening dirge for the seven corpses strewn on the foundation of a Spanish mansion in the bulldozed town of Surfridge. It bent and amplified the constant roar of LAX jets into an eerie whooshing pulse. The devil wind nabbed thousands of blue butterflies and turned them into dive bombers. They closed their wings to avoid being blown out to sea, landed like darts, covered the men like fish scales and held on for dear life. It was the day after Thanksgiving. Patamon’s daughter, Maribelle, had married the…
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