And according to
the stranger first ice sheets will thaw
sea levels will
rise you read the stranger said to
heights unheard of
shores will smother previous neighbors no one
will weather well
the earth’s peevish heat will increase air
itself septic streets
bridges unbearable the old ready routes—routes
of childhood—routes
of recall—now a dream unnavigable What
was the way
you once would take to call on
the one you
loved which way did it begin again
it’s gone awe
intact perhaps but face it the stranger
said we’re going
to need new ideas you read we’re
going to need
new tactics strategies for endurance don’t ruminate
on sinkholes water
supplies toxins massive unknowable truly undivinable fractures
in the brittle
tectonic masses Oh delicate underworld Oh green
child You once
played orphanage What is this game and
did you play
it—it’s orphanage and you would peacefully
envision—Oh grimy
child—that everyone you knew thus far
at this small
age was dead—what’s dead—mourn your
parents—sweet warm
parents—taste the soil and then pretend
to live for
hours on some foggy Saturday morning subsist
on twigs carrots
chives rhubarb from the garden then braid
Aisha Sabatini Sloan
Episode 22: “Form and Formlessness”
In an essay specially commissioned for the podcast, Aisha Sabatini Sloan describes rambling around Paris with her father, Lester Sloan, a longtime staff photographer for Newsweek, and a glamorous woman who befriends them. In an excerpt from The Art of Fiction no. 246, Rachel Cusk and Sheila Heti discuss how writing her first novel helped Cusk discover her “shape or identity or essence.” Next, Allan Gurganus’s reading of his story “It Had Wings,” about an arthritic woman who finds a fallen angel in her backyard, is interspersed with a version of the story rendered as a one-woman opera by the composer Bruce Saylor. The episode closes with “Dear Someone,” a poem by Deborah Landau.
Rachel Cusk photo courtesy the author.
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