The Lake, the Dust

by Jamie Iredell

At K-mart I bought boots stitched from the remains of dinosaurs. They lasted what a white person’s idea of a native would call many moons. Me and the boots hiked the mountains west of the Black Rock Desert, this landscape thorned and poppied, hissing with rattlers. The desert itself was alkaline, the dust silty-fine, so that it worked into everything, even your skin, and started grinding things apart. I slipped these same boots past my toes for a day trip to The Lake with Jon. Everyone says “The Lake” like that in Reno, because people who live at “The Lake” have money, and those living in the meadows give blood. Jon’s Mercury Cougar had rust damage that spotted it like pimples. Jon didn’t even live in Reno. He lived in the desert. That should tell you something about his skin.

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Jamie Iredell was born on the Central Coast in California, then went to college at the University of Nevada, Reno. He left Reno, after earning his MA in Literature and the Environment, to head east to Atlanta for his PhD in creative writing at Georgia State University. He is the author of When I Moved to Nevada (forthcoming from The Greying Ghost Press). His writing has appeared in many magazines, including The Chattahoochee Review, Zone 3, The Pedestal Magazine, The Literary Review, ISLE, Descant, elimae, and Mud Luscious. He is a founding editor of New South, and is production editor for C&R Press. He has been known to enjoy watching turtles swim in southern creeks.

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Back to Issue One: Fall 2008