the madison review
In the Name of Perfection Javier Sandoval
Laughing from my escape, a cigarette from its retro blue I dash through the crowds case. Old-fashioned Camels, I dig it. of drunk tourists singing in Spanish. The discotheques Ahhh. It’s the way they truly bordering the street shine neonroast my lungs, He says playfully. lights across its wet cobblestones, Makes me feel alive. and I imagine those rays as the stained glass of my cathedral. I get that, I say. We must be I crash through each pane for dysfunctional. three blocks, tucking my chin like a runner breaching tape, If so, it’s only because we just envisioning shards exploding haven’t gotten there yet, He around me onto the sleek says, clenching a fist. But stone—but a strange feeling when we do, we’ll see it all, compels me to screech-stop. and we’ll function . . . just . . . fine. His smile pulls up and He Panting, I peer up at the most gazes over my head, as though radiant club in coastal Mexico, at a mountaintop. We laugh. a tower of all glass; twelve crystal floors of ecstatic souls I tell Him I’m from the state in grinding together, desperately, America where Camels are whole-heartedly; neon-beams made, which brightens His face shooting in all directions, as more than the disco’s neon from a lighthouse, warning the blue-pink-blue. satiated, calling the frantic. I hustle in from the ocean-breeze. He asks, And what other holy sites does your sweet state contain? † Michael Jordan played for our Bum one? I ask in English, as university. He smokes leaning against the bar on the twelfth floor. He’s AHHH, yes! Jordan! The god young and blond, with shallowknown as Michael Jordan! That’s water eyes, but still older—I had where he must have learned to bleed. to sneak in. He smiles, ejecting I watch reruns of him all, the, 70