Las Vegas literature has been and continues to be a literature of exiles, written mainly by outsiders who arrive from elsewhere, stay briefly, linger along the city’s glittering Strip but never once invest the place with any depth, any soul, any idea of what is going on around them.

I had never witnessed so many ghosts
until I lived in Vegas. The desert’s
potter’s field; for, what other city boasts
such a thin veil? What phantasmic comforts
could such a necropolis offer up
to the living? The Valley of Fire called
and the temple of Sekhmet called. Worship
comes in all forms. Can you hear this? Ribald
pleasures are nothing compared to carnal
worship. The ghosts came in throngs. They hungered
to be witnessed. “Hear me, friend, the frightful
veil is not all so frightful,” they murmured.
There is no Emerald City; Vegas
is a way station, nothing more or less.