Summer
by
Pete Mladinic
I am Rosendo Rodriguez. Fluent in English
and Spanish, I also speak German, French,
and Italian. I graduated from Texas Tech
with a B.A. in Art History, my main interest,
17th Century Egyptian painting and sculpture.
With a love for travel, I visited Egypt and hope
to go back. I am interested in architecture,
and am earning a master’s degree online
in architectural engineering. I am an inmate
at the Texas correctional facility in Huntsville.
If you are a woman between twenty and forty,
with a college degree, I would love to make
your acquaintance, and correspond through
letters. Should we find mutual compatibility
in our epistolary friendship, I’d like to
meet
in person. A warm person, I like children
and animals, and living life to the fullest.
Also, I think you will like my smile and dark
good looks. I’ve been told I am handsome,
but it’s what’s inside a person that
counts.
The ashes of Rosendo Rodriguez, I blow
over the landfill outside Lubbock, Texas,
where a suitcase with Summer Baldwin’s
remains was found. The marine reservist
I was, before I was given a lethal injection .
. .
I drove her out here, after beating her
to a pulp. She was a sex worker. It wasn’t
sex
I wanted. But to batter and kill. Two months
pregnant, alive, when I stuffed her in the
suitcase, this landfill is where she died,
among these mounds of garbage I, the ashes
of Rosendo, blow about, aimless. A clean-cut
marine, he looked like an altar boy, a young
man any mother would love to meet. Summer
wanted to be a beautician. She loved
her young son, who has outlived her twenty-
seven years. One night at a 7-11 she got into
a Ford 150 pick up. The John seemed polite.
A gentleman, opening the passenger door.
“Glad to meet you, my name’s Rosendo.”
Peter
Mladinic’s fifth book of poems, Voices from the Past, is available from
Better Than Starbucks Publications.
An
animal rights advocate, he lives in Hobbs, New Mexico, United States.
