13 Comments
Jan 1Liked by Sal Randolph

This is quite unlike anything I've read. I felt like I was reading a painting. Guernica.

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“What is one person’s betrayal in all of that?” -- This story is full of mystery and evasion, but there’s no escaping its pain. The strategy of not-telling is bold. The speaker can’t change what happened but tries to give it tolerable perspective; feels blame but doesn’t want to tell the story in a way that puts blame in the center. Inventive and artful. I hope you are having a generative retreat!

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Dec 30, 2023Liked by Sal Randolph

"I had been writing a poem with my body in space." All this..

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How? Really, how how how did you DO this? It’s stunning, breathtaking. So many winking stars of beauty, like this one: “This is the inverse of deja vu, where something novel seems to be already known, instead what is known has become unrecognizable.”

The trust you show here. I’m in awe.

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"The island I live on has been cleft, it has become a pair of islands that no longer know each other. It was done with a wooden spoon, the kind that every kitchen has, a well-used spoon, softened by a thousand pots of spaghetti sauce, a spoon in the hand of a child. It was not one spoon, but two, and it was not one child, but twins." That's just such a beautiful passage, in a tender, thought provoking piece.

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