On the Edge

I stand on the edge of a lake in Spicewood, Texas. I can see only so far, my gaze fixed on the point where I would no longer see my feet if I were to enter the water. I remember the Sunday when my family piled into the Chevy Impala, pearl white with a red interior, and we drove to the Laurel Mountains for a picnic and swimming in a lake. I sat in the backseat with my brother and sister listening to music from my olive green, 9-volt transistor radio that I received the year before on my birthday. This was the Sunday I left the radio in the car under the magnifying glare of the sun where it melted like chocolate beneath the convex curve of the back window. This was the Sunday that my father told the park rangers that someone had stolen our car when it was actually parked one lot further over than we had remembered. This was the Sunday when grown-ups grabbed their children, pulled them out of the water screaming, splashed their way through a wave of panic to reach the shore as lifeguards along the makeshift beach, emptied their lungs, blowing their whistles like air raid sirens. They dropped from their wooden highchairs, grabbed poles with hooks and poles with trident barbs, and dragged behind them a lead-weighted net as they charged into the water. This was the Sunday I became a believer in sea monsters as I watched six men wrestle ten feet of serpent out of the lake—a thrashing, writhing body thick as a leather fire hose, head snapping left and right with a mouth like an auditorium filled with row after row of razor sharp teeth.

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Mark Jodon (He/Him) is the author of two full-length collections of poetry, Miles of Silence (Kelsay Books) and Day of the Speckled Trout (Transcendent Zero Press).