The Distant Beautiful (an excerpt)
I
The day had been ugly. A cloud cover like a steady ominous hand over us. When it finally began to rain it alternated between violence and melancholy and it was cold. All of the things I had ever dared to love were coming back as confessions, brief episodes, a montage of long nights that played themselves out to a soundtrack of rain that pummeled the leaves and rooftops of wherever we happened to be.
II
I lit up the last cigarette with nothing to look forward to besides dawn. Blue-eyed dawn in yet another city that had seen better days. There are times when you want no one around and this was it. It felt like a somewhere you could end things and get it over with, but it really wasn't that special and it isn't that easy.
III
We spent the afternoons drinking coffee with milk and making plans. We were good at making plans.
IV
Each night more bad perfume, more whiskey on ice, in that brutal summer when the short rains soaked us through, when we were learning how to die inside the other with the sun dipping down into the ladle of the sea. I became certain that some shred of an answer lay beyond, below the smoke of freight ships hauling their cargo from one place to the other. I kept seeing them and waiving but they never waived back.
V
Most days she never said anything but she knew. And I knew that she knew.
VI
Mornings after we would make even more plans though all of the others had yet to materialize. They were piling up into our own anthology of failures, tall enough that you couldn't see what came before or after. But somehow it didn't seem to matter. Each time another plan fell apart we died a little more too. The rains washed everything clean and we muddied ourselves again and again. We didn't know it then but we had found the secret. And not knowing we kept turning over new stones, kept looking for it. Out there in the arms of others who were lost like us, in braids and perfume and the failings of the body, out there where the distant beautiful is waiting.
|
POETRY
Introduction from the Editor ...
Sara Backer - Moving
Kimberly L. Becker - Interro ...
Trina Burke - Lore
Joan Colby - The Lips
Abbie Copeland - Circus Folk
Laura Davis - One Hundred Wi ...
Ivona Elenton - The Stepsist ...
Daniela Elza - eros/ions (fr ...
T.M. Johnson - Dawn: While Y ...
Michael Kriesel - Biography ...
Dawn Leas - Slipstream
Holaday Mason - The Boy Is t ...
Gerald McCarthy - Mountain p ...
Richard Prins - Pantoum Foun ...
Mehnaz Sahibzada - Remnants
Mark Schoenknecht - A Thousa ...
Dave Shortt - Alcohol
Evelyn A. So - Field Trip to ...
Katherine Soniat - Peaches
Donna Spector - Wedding Morn ...
Sara Backer - Moving
Kimberly L. Becker - Interro ...
Trina Burke - Lore
Joan Colby - The Lips
Abbie Copeland - Circus Folk
Laura Davis - One Hundred Wi ...
Ivona Elenton - The Stepsist ...
Daniela Elza - eros/ions (fr ...
T.M. Johnson - Dawn: While Y ...
Michael Kriesel - Biography ...
Dawn Leas - Slipstream
Holaday Mason - The Boy Is t ...
Gerald McCarthy - Mountain p ...
Richard Prins - Pantoum Foun ...
Mehnaz Sahibzada - Remnants
Mark Schoenknecht - A Thousa ...
Dave Shortt - Alcohol
Evelyn A. So - Field Trip to ...
Katherine Soniat - Peaches
Donna Spector - Wedding Morn ...


REVIEWS
Vincent A. Cellucci's and Ch ...
klipschutz's This Drawn & ...
Ann Cefola's Face Paintin ...
Joseph Hutchison's Thread ...
Sándor Márai's The Wither ...
Coyla Barry's The Flying ...
Natasha Kochicheril Moni's < ...
Virginia Smith Rice's Whe ...
Grezegorz Wróblewski's Le ...
Marjory Wentworth's New a ...
Jared Carter's Darkened R ...
Antonia Clark's Chameleon ...
Bruce Lader's Fugitive Ho ...
Becky Gould Gibson's Head ...
Donald Levering's The Wat ...
Janice Moore Fuller's On ...
klipschutz's This Drawn & ...
Ann Cefola's Face Paintin ...
Joseph Hutchison's Thread ...
Sándor Márai's The Wither ...
Coyla Barry's The Flying ...
Natasha Kochicheril Moni's < ...
Virginia Smith Rice's Whe ...
Grezegorz Wróblewski's Le ...
Marjory Wentworth's New a ...
Jared Carter's Darkened R ...
Antonia Clark's Chameleon ...
Bruce Lader's Fugitive Ho ...
Becky Gould Gibson's Head ...
Donald Levering's The Wat ...
Janice Moore Fuller's On ...


|