No Poem Is the Only Poem. No Story Is the Only Story.
The frayed Atlas, like most of Trina’s clothes and books, was a hand-me-down from her thirteen-year-old cousin sister, Paramita. The clatter of steel utensils being washed in a neighbouring flat mingled with the notes of a hit Bollywood song that played on someone’s radio. Trina’s own noisy house was peaceful for a change.
Books not only offered me friendship; they also spoke about tragedies that made my own loss seem bearable.
Anne isn’t listening. She doesn’t have time. She’s left already, half-way down the street, her back to me, her hair bobbing. Her shoulders are thin, her sweater threadbare. Her knees are knobby, her hem uneven. One shoe buckle beats against the asphalt. She carries a diary.
Now, he didn’t feel alone in this frenetic crowd thanks to Beth’s presence. Yet he experienced a kind of pre-aloneness, pre-grief at their soon-to-come separation. He’d tried to intellectualize himself beyond it. He’d tried to articulate the absurdity of the situation: the absurdity of falling in love with her, of having fallen in love in the space of only a few hours.
Those are overt examples of Mary Shelley’s influence, but I know she and her creations seep into my narratives in all kinds of strange ways. Only recently have I recognized that even my current novel in progress, “The Isolation of Conspiracy,” from which “The Artist Spoke” is excerpted, owes a great deal to her.
Seven deer stand knee-deep in the blooming water, ears pivoting forward and back, mouths dripping duckweed, they reap the summer harvest.