Earthen Between by Tom Snarsky The red sand coagulated further into mist than either one of its excited states could account for on its own. Each state had a ridiculous legislature, of course, but such bodies would not even begin to suffice for the sand’s purposes. This was emergent sediment with a gaseous agenda. Within the boundaries of possibility and expectation, diffusion was just another thing for it to do or pull at, like a recreational drug or a juicy scab. Naturally the desiccated subject, its property rights intact, became interested in transformation. It licked its lips and googled all the requisite information, scouring Wikipedia for a sense of itself qua desert, though not in a limiting way; consulting the salt in the sea air, it was seeking a solution. It knew what it needed to do, and though it did not lack the proper tools, it understood that the dialectic would be strange and perhaps uncomfortable. The very notion of stability seemed to be at stake, although it knew from its intimate experience with dunes that that was precisely the wrong sort of stability to seek to preserve. Gradually, then, it enacted the shift. With time, it established a new normalcy along the gradient, and it managed in the end to sublimate completely. At the conclusion of it all, the sand felt like a tablecloth in a magic trick: spectacular, although primarily so for having vanished without breaking anything.
Tom Snarsky is a Noyce Teaching Fellow at Tufts University in Medford, MA. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in After the Pause, Shadowtrain, Otoliths, Cricket Online Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Braintree, MA. Accompanying photo by Anita Ritenour