| Featured Book |
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| Just West of Famous |
| Charles Baxter doesn't pull any punches when he answers Lisa Coutant's questions in this month's author interview.
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| In this issue: |
An encore poem from Gol McAdam
Claire Litton's amazing Authenticity Leads
A collection of poetry from Craig Kirchner
New fiction from Maria Pollack and Josh Stewart
Plus great poetry from Corie Feiner, Gary Wilkins, and Sherry Pasquerello |
| Coming Next Month |
Anne Frasier has some fresh ideas about how to boost her book sales,
Ron Hogan is the ultimate literary insider - and next month he's going to take the Picolata Review into his world for an exclusive look around.
Plus:More great poetry, short fiction, and features. Enough great writing to satisfy any literary palate.
Want to submit to The Picolata Review? Send your submissions and queries to submissions@picolatareview.org
Complete guidelines can be found here. |
| The Picolata Review |
Managing Editor Mark Pettus is a full time journalist in St. Augustine, Florida, and author of the novel, Transit Gloria
Features Editor Lisa Coutant is a consultant, former writer for the Philadelphia Theatre Review, and a fiction writer. She is also Vice President of the professional writing group, Pennwriters.
Poetry Editor Andy H-H., is a poet who lives in the beautiful countryside of West Yorkshire
with his partner and a menagerie of pets (a sheep occasionally stares in through the kitchen window), in a home surrounded by literary history. Ted Hughes was born there, Sylvia Plath is buried nearby, and first Emily Bronte, then Kate
Bush, made a certain stretch of desolate land five minutes' walk away very famous indeed.
Fiction Editor Serenity Banks's day job is as an industry magazine editor. She also writes an online sex-advice column, and is trying to find an agent for her latest horror novel.
The Picolata Review is a monthly online publication, and a place to find emerging writers and poets. We welcome you, and hope we'll see you again. If you forget our address, look for us just a little west of famous. |
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| Volume 1, Number 2 August, 2006 |
| The Resurrection of My Heart, an excerpt from Janet Thorning's debut novel |
Chapter 1
I lived in a tiny Manhattan apartment. I was happy there. On Saturday mornings, I walked two blocks to my favorite bakery for a cinnamon bagel; and then to my favorite book store to meet Mark, my best friend.
I met Mark a week after I moved to Manhattan. I met him in a grocery store. Both of us reached for the same bottle of nutmeg. We laughed. He said he couldn't live without it. I said I couldn't live without it either. We became best friends.
Both of us were voracious magazine readers. But we were twenty and poor. The store owner, Mr. Fritz, an old man with claw shaped fingers, let us read magazines in the back of the store on two milk crates, in return we stocked his shelves.
I cooked breakfast for Mark every Sunday. I cooked cornmeal porridge. We loved cornmeal porridge. It reminded us of our grandmothers; of the times we spent as children sitting at their kitchen tables, our heads in our hands, watching, waiting impatiently for them to feed us a teasthingy of condensed milk before they added the rest of the tin to the porridge. The nutmeg always went in last. But it was the most important ingredient because it meant that soon our bellies would be satisfied; filled with a warm, never ending love.
My grandmother woke up before sunrise on Sunday morning's. She brushed her teeth with baking soda. She disliked the taste of toothpaste. She washed her face with pink Avon soap. It made her face smell sweet, sweet as the red roses in the garden that drew my blood every summer. After, she went back to her bedroom to pray.
I waited until I heard her door close. Then I tip-toed down the hallway, making sure to avoid the spots that squeaked from old age. I watched her pray through the key hole. She knelt humbly on the side of her bed. She always groaned on the way down. She had bad knees. The doctors said she needed pills. But she refused to take them, because her cousin Mooney died after he took pills a doctor gave him for a bad headache.
She joined her hands; and closed her eyes. Her face looked serene. Then came the words in a soft wave. She asked God to forgive her for her sins. I wondered what sins she had committed. Without stopping, she thanked God for everything; for her family; for her friends, especially Miss Pearl who drank whiskey and cried everyday; for her job; for the roof over her head; for Pastor James who she believed would one day sit at the right hand of God; only I knew better. Amen.
It was a hot Saturday afternoon. My grandmother and I were on our way home from the grocery store when she asked me to put my bags down and run inside the First Baptist Church, to see if Pastor James was there. I used all of my strength to pull the big white door, open. I walked in. I stood there. The pews were empty. The organ was silent. I felt strange; almost terrified but I walked down the isle anyway, looking, listening, silently praying for any sign of life. I was a few feet away from the stage when a fat gray mouse scurried out from behind a pew. It stopped. It twitched its nose and looked at me as if it was wondering what I was doing there, all alone.
I called out to the pastor in a low respectful voice. There was no answer. I walked up two steps. I was standing on the small stage. I walked over to the podium. I placed my hands on its cold edges. I imagined Sue Clark, a pretty white girl from school sitting in the front pew. She had been teasing me about my old clothes for months. I was about to strike her dead with God's words, when I heard a faint moaning coming from behind me, from behind the pure white curtains that separated the congregation from Pastor James' office. I couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman.
I pushed aside the curtains and walked softly towards Pastor James' office. I didn't want to disturb him if he was praying, especially if he was on his knees because that meant that he was praying for every lost soul in Michigan.
The door was slightly ajar. I looked through the crack. I saw Pastor James moving in a rhythmic motion on top of Sister Mary who wasn't his wife.
At first, I felt scared. I was going to run away, but I didn't. There was something about watching them; and them not knowing that filled me with adrenaline, that made me feel powerful and that was exactly how I felt every time I watched my grandmother pray, powerful.
Janet Thorning's work has been published in several literary magazines. Recent publications include, anderbo.com, Kiss Machine, Bleeding Quill, and Metamorphoses: A Journal of Literature and Art. She is currently working on her first novel. |
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