He loved her and married her there in Positano above the sea. The only thing she had packed was her gauzy white dress, which she almost forgot on the plane rushing down the aisle to meet him on the runway after she landed.
So I’m ready to meet my friend to talk things over, here at Kelly’s, the Irish pub where every two drinks gets you a little red poker chip you can exchange for a third drink free, and if you need any clearer picture of the place it’s right under the green awning that spills out like a big ghastly puddle over the side of the street and where inside are three stools occupying the near…
It starts in late summer. Early evening. Outside a lecture hall, everyone waits. He’s in Levi’s and a white t-shirt. She’s in a loose black skirt and a cream-colored linen shirt.
Interview Ivana Sajko is the author of Every Time We Say Goodbye. L’Esprit Literary Review: We’d love to hear a bit about yourself and your writing background. How did you come into literature? What are some of your literary influences, styles, tastes, and philosophies? Ivana Sajko: If I were to begin with the prehistory, I think I actually wanted to paint. The dream of a girl who doesn’t feel comfortable in the crowd, and so…
Certainly I was a monster. Bull-headed, & front- hooved, with the rump, the legs, & the feet of a human male at the crest of adolescence. As adult as I’d ever be, since the moment of my birth.
They crammed into the Crown Bar, a clatter of them, ordering pints of Smithwick’s and Harp, packets of Tayto cheese and onion. In the snug, Gráinne found herself at the far end of the table from him, with a pint in her hand. Say something, she willed herself, something interesting or witty.
The old woman has forgotten to turn the Open sign to Closed. She’s muttering at ghosts and crushing greasy pink paper from a chromed wire rack at the display counter when the night baker pushes open the door. The door’s sleighbells jangle. Now she looks up and sees him.
Interview David Ryan, author of story collections Alligator and Animals in Motion: Stories, joins us as the L’Esprit Featured Writer for Issue Nine. Read an original story from David in I9. L’Esprit Literary Review: Tell us a little about yourself and your writing background. How did you come into literature? Give the audience a sense of your literary influences, styles, tastes, and philosophy. David Ryan: Well, I was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, but spent…
The old woman has forgotten to turn the Open sign to Closed. She’s muttering at ghosts and crushing greasy pink paper from a chromed wire rack at the display counter when the night baker pushes open the door. The door’s sleighbells jangle. Now she looks up and sees him.
For our final class of the semester, we read Borges’s short story “The Aleph.” In his deceased lover’s basement, a man encounters “a small iridescent sphere of almost unbearable brilliance.”
She saw; she understood. Later, Rezia would remember the soft breeze through the windows, making the curtains blow into the room and brush against the chair where one of them would often get stuck, draped over the back of it; curtains billowing like shrouds behind her as she leaned over the windowsill and looked down at him looking up at her, eyes glassy, Septimus dead. She held no illusions, not yet.
Sofía: Norah rainchecked on me. Lola Rosa? It was noon and Sofía had yet to take a shower. The sunlight crawled through the bedroom window and tempted her with the touch of its golden fingers. Era had her own reasons.
The two sisters, Mari and Mabli, turned left off Thomas Street and made their way beneath the old Marble Bridge, where many of the young boys of the village had gathered to play their games. One or two of these boys had called down to them as they passed, asking if they would retrieve their aggies or their taws from the thickets below.
A little while before she has her vision, Lily Briscoe reminds herself that “One must hold the scene—so—in a vice and let nothing come in and spoil it.” This is the artist’s task, to follow the scene, as it emerges out of life, and hold on, through the tempest.
Cover Photo: Michael C. Roberts is a retired pediatric psychologist. He has published digital and film photographs in Burningword, FERAL, Cholla Needles, Cantos, Cold Moon, Right Hand Pointing, Door is a Jar, Camas, Hindsight, Straylight, Thimble, Ponder, Closed Eye Open, Alchemy Spoon, 3rd Wednesday, The Right Words, Cardinal Sins, and elsewhere.
