There's a clock that hangs on the wall of the café where I have morning coffee, its face is depicted in higher case Roman Numerals, thick lines denote numbers that are encassed in a black circle, in the center of the art deco piece there are a number of smaller clocks of different sizes, each with different markings on their face, each painted in different colours. Time is created by a artist's vision to allow one to step into a perception of the is and was.
'I say seven and think it means something. The figure slides across the page or the blackboard or the sweet sky of the sawdust floor and though it tells me something like the cost of the joyride, or what filly to back, or how long more the journey, the immedate journey that is, it does not tell me what I need to know. Not that I know what I need to know. Not that I do, I am a woman, at least I am led to believe so. I bleed et cetera.
And those noises, and those emanations, and those come-hithers, and those coo-coos, issue from me faithfully like buntings. Not to mention the more bucolic sounds, the ones in sly reserve, the choice slushing of the womb which have ogled many another by means of gurgle, nuance, melody, ditty and crass babbling suppplication, A dab hand at it I was. As aforesaid I have met bards and knackers. Along the way-side. They told me many a tale, spun me many a yarn, swindled me as often as not. I bathed their feet, had ointments, mused, groped in the dark, looked up to the constellations, identified the Plough and the Milky Way, said most lachrymose things.
There are so many waysides that one mistakes them sometimes for the real route.'
So wrote Edna O' Brien in 'Dark,' a novella that was first published by Weidenfield and Nicholson in 1972 in the UK.
An Irish woman writing of her time , stroking the page with immagination and musicality. I picked it up in a market here in Andalucia, its cream pages now have a light tobacco colour. It has a huge voice, one that I recognise from growing up in her Ireland of the 60s. And it's a voice that I still hear today on the social networks as women dip back to feel their way through the day.
This book is still worth reading for the loveliness of the language and the snapshot of the times it inhabits. I picked it off the bookshelf here just after fixing Stephen Zelnick's 'Storni translations on the page, and as I flicked through it I was caught in the similarity of the imagery, one prose, the other poetry, both women writing on similar topics. Both fashioning their patriarchal societies, to explain, to layer, to cut in and to cut away, and to show the rest of us how they saw it.
Zelnick's Storni's translations are beautiful, they define the heart and tone of a personality, and it's so lovely to meet her here on our pages and read his critique, and hear her wonderful voice.
And writers write of that now, which slips from under one as its stepped on, and from story one might know a contrast, understand a difference, find a feeling and even sometimes make a decision on needs and wants to maybe leave behind what's no longer required, for how else will we really know what is wanted if we don't have a comparsion to note, to share, and what better way to discover than by reading a good story or poem.
We have a full issue of short stories, flash and micro fiction, cnf, interview, poetry, photography and art; we have work shared with us from the 'Writing Short Fiction' web site as we continue to work with Bruce Harris to promote voice, underscore quality work and build readership. And as we link through the work at LW Bruce will compliment our contributors in a similar fashions with links from his site.
Thanks to everyone involved in bringing the issue home, for stopping to chat and share pleasentries along the way, for popping into us on FB for a minute or two, for emailing copy and correcting my mistakes, and for your patience, too, it's no small task and we appreciate your time, and its value.
My best,
Marie