From my perch on the great rock, I ask myself this: What mountains have crawled across these mountains. There’s a man running down the empty road. The big dust road. Drunk in his pursuit. His legs the color of the road. His eyes the red of the dust of the time-pulverized rock that is the road. He pants and spits and smiles wicked. Oh, the sun, the sun. Someone’s cooking garlic in the iron pan. There’s smoke stain on the ceiling. Looks like a tree’s shadow. Your feet are bare on the slab. Whose nights populate your days. I need someone to tell your secrets to. Your dress is unthreading at the hem. I say don’t you look young. I say I want to cut a hole in the river. There’s a lot of night ahead of you. Don’t forget that. This is the face of a man who does not sleep. In the dead town, buildings go idle & trees sprout in the ruins. I pull the gray from my face. I pull my face from my face. There is grain in the field. I feel knowable and without mystery. There’s dust under the mattress. I saw you on the attic stair. You said to me: My verse is laughter. Danger inside me. Come on. There’s a closed door. There’s a hair clinging to the mirror. I want to come to the closed door. And make it the unlocked door. And there, a city. Small mountains. But hills. Whorls in the water. In the hair. Eddying to nowhere. There is a cold vein ready for plunder. There is mineral. There is ore. All you need is: A rake. A mattock. Your hands. A million tons of water. Look. I put my hands in the pool. I put my hands in the river. Another acolyte to the lord. So beautiful. Ooh. And everything stopped. And then nothing happened. But it was there. You could jump into it. Trouble gravity. Have your way with it. I am attached to your body. Like a bramble seed. Like a blister. I am swelling on your ankle. I am sprouting in your mane. The man sitting next to you might be a building block. He might have a staple of glass in foot. He may be waiting for nothing. Maybe his life is a brick pediment. Or a torn flag. A whisper tooth. I am your blown candle, reading by the light of a cold dark planet. I said: Beware of the falling down branches. The sky is tornado green. My ears are popping. Your skin is hot. The air is hot and undoomed and like a punch through fog. Where is your dazzle. Who is your tangle and shake and shiver. You are my good dogs. I put my hand in your hide, your bark and frizz. Can you be touched. You are lapping the annihilating sadness of your stillness. I am a dead fuse dangering in your void. An ancient pediment. The angles of a room. A body. Two. We are honing our spirits. Our bad luck. We are shaping it like ice melting. We are cooling our drinks, and holding the cold glasses to our hot necks, our red cheeks. In the summer heavy. When the sun is dialed.
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Edmund Sandoval‘s work has appeared in the minnesota review, Hobart AND Rejection Letters (oh, the humanity), the American Literary Review, Pithead Chapel, Necessary Fiction, and The Common, among others. He lives in Chicago.
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image: “Tunnel”: Srilatha Rajagopal has been living in the US since 1990 with her husband of thirty-one years. She loves to read, write, cook, garden, experiment with her iphone camera, and watch birds in her backyard. She was an IT Project Manager in a former life and some of her creativity may be from making up estimates for a living. She has a short story published in the literary magazine Shark Reef and an essay in the parenting magazine Grownandflown.com.
Rejection Letters 