[booklog 2006]
39. small.spiral.notebook, volume 3, issue 1. some of the writing is good, some is rough but still interesting, and some of it was mostly just rough, or didn't get to me much. i picked it up in Portland, at the tail end of wandering through Powell's, from a rack of other literary magazines, because i liked the title and because of the photograph of a wrought-iron gate on the cover. i flipped it open and started reading in the middle of one story. the first paragraph i read...resonated hard, i guess, with wherever my mind was at just that moment. it reached out and caught me, more strongly than any little scrap of writing i've come across in awhile. l_stboy looked at it and mentioned that the author (Aimee Pokwatka) is in the same program as tyratae at Syracuse, so i picked up the glossy little thing and took it home.
so, then, here's that bit, a paragraph out of the middle of a story called "Perennials":
"They would bump into each other from time to time, early in the morning with their hands full of coffee cups, or on the fringe of the bathroom, one reaching for a toothbrush, the other ripping at a tissue. When they first met at the library, the man bumped into the woman so hard she knocked an entire shelf of books to the floor. As he dusted the confetti of paper from her arms, they started talking, and it was not long before they were cast out for lewd and unruly behavior. For years, whenever they were in a new town and passed a library on the street, they'd go in and try to recreate the scene, their laughter loud and intimate in spite of the crescendo of shushes and disapproving glares. Now, when they collided in the hall it was clearly an accident, and they were shocked by the abruptness of the contact, as if they were expecting each other's bodies to be harder, and colder."
...something about the way that this piece captures the creeping-in of distance, the kind of loss that comes in through the little things and catches you off-guard...i think that's what made me have to stop, stand still, and read the whole thing.
so, then, here's that bit, a paragraph out of the middle of a story called "Perennials":
"They would bump into each other from time to time, early in the morning with their hands full of coffee cups, or on the fringe of the bathroom, one reaching for a toothbrush, the other ripping at a tissue. When they first met at the library, the man bumped into the woman so hard she knocked an entire shelf of books to the floor. As he dusted the confetti of paper from her arms, they started talking, and it was not long before they were cast out for lewd and unruly behavior. For years, whenever they were in a new town and passed a library on the street, they'd go in and try to recreate the scene, their laughter loud and intimate in spite of the crescendo of shushes and disapproving glares. Now, when they collided in the hall it was clearly an accident, and they were shocked by the abruptness of the contact, as if they were expecting each other's bodies to be harder, and colder."
...something about the way that this piece captures the creeping-in of distance, the kind of loss that comes in through the little things and catches you off-guard...i think that's what made me have to stop, stand still, and read the whole thing.