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JoanneHARRIS
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My sour cherry liqueur is especially popular, though I feel a little guilty that I cannot remember the cherry’s name. The secret is to leave the stones in. Layer cherries and sugar one on the other in a widemouthed glass jar, covering each layer gradually with clear spirit (kirsch is best, but you can use vodka or even Armagnac) up to half the jar’s capacity. Top up with spirit and wait. Every month, turn the jar carefully to release any accumulated sugar. In three years’ time, the spirit has bled the cherries white, itself stained deep red now, penetrating even to the stone and the tiny almond inside it, becoming pungent, evocative, a scent of autumn past. Serve in tiny liqueur glasses, with a spoon to scoop out the cherry, and leave it in the mouth until the macerated fruit dissolves under the tongue. Pierce the stone with the point of a tooth to release the liqueur trapped inside and leave it for a long time in the mouth, playing with it with the tip of the tongue, rolling it under, over, like a single prayer bead. Try to remember the time of this ripening, that summer, that hot autumn, the time the well ran dry, the time we had the wasp’s nest, time past, lost, found again in the hard place at the heart of the fruit ... From Five Quarters Of The Orange William Morrow, 2021
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OttoSELLES |
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Otto Selles is a professor of French at Calvin University (Grand Rapids, MI), where he chairs the departments of World Languages and Art and Design. He studied at McMaster University in Hamilton, ON (BA, MA) and at the University of Paris-IV Sorbonne (PhD). His academic research focuses on eighteenth-century French literature and the fate of the Huguenots in France before the French Revolution. He is also a photographer and poet. The poem published here (which was originally published in the Reformed Journal in April 2012) opens his upcoming collection Matins, to be released by Pandora Press (Hamilton, ON). It is worth noting that the characteristics of this poem include both poetic and narrative elements, allowing it to be interpreted as a One-Page story.
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Matins
Before the alarm, before the reminders about lunches, band, the dentist, and soccer, I slip out of bed and watch the kettle boil to life. I greet the toast tenderly, and the jam, once again, surprises, so sweet, so sticky. Through the kitchen window I sense the sullen pine tree fenced between the garage and the power lines. I sip, chew, and cast a thought into the dark, or rather a question about the day, about what might or might not happen.
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These texts are published with the kind authorization of the author.
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TimBOWLING |
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A boarder coughs in an attic room, a child’s fever breaks, dark branches gull the glass of an upstairs window, and someone reaches for the Seneca on the shelf.
Old houses.
Something is happening at the end of their long hallways: the heart of the past is foreclosing on itself.
From Selected Poems (Nightwood Editions, 2013)
This is the only letter God will ever send you. And if, opening it, you expect answers, advice, condolences, you will find a signature of bone. Otherwise, a great hunched watchfulness will leave your body, and perch on the black branch between stars.
From Selected Poems (Nightwood Editions, 2013)
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These texts are published with the kind authorization of the author. |
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Virginia
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Green
The pointed fingers of glass hang downwards. The light slides down the glass, and drops a pool of green. All day long the ten fingers of the lustre drop green upon the marble. The feathers of parakeets—their harsh cries—sharp blades of palm trees—green, too; green needles glittering in the sun. But the hard glass drips on to the marble; the pools hover above the dessert sand; the camels lurch through them; the pools settle on the marble; rushes edge them; weeds clog them; here and there a white blossom; the frog flops over; at night the stars are set there unbroken. Evening comes, and the shadow sweeps the green over the mantelpiece; the ruffled surface of ocean. No ships come; the aimless waves sway beneath the empty sky. It's night; the needles drip blots of blue. The green's out.
The snub-nosed monster rises to the surface and spouts through his blunt nostrils two columns of water, which, fiery-white in the centre, spray off into a fringe of blue beads. Strokes of blue line the black tarpaulin of his hide. Slushing the water through mouth and nostrils he sings, heavy with water, and the blue closes over him dowsing the polished pebbles of his eyes. Thrown upon the beach he lies, blunt, obtuse, shedding dry blue scales. Their metallic blue stains the rusty iron on the beach. Blue are the ribs of the wrecked rowing boat. A wave rolls beneath the blue bells. But the cathedral's different, cold, incense laden, faint blue with the veils of madonnas.
From Monday or Tuesday, 1921
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